Tom Schnell
Senior Distinguished Engineer at Dell Technologies
Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolTom Schnell is a Senior Distinguished Engineer and strategic product leader with over two decades of experience architecting notebooks, desktops, and server systems for Dell and startups, blending deep hardware and software expertise from chip-level design to system architecture. He has driven product strategy for multi-billion-dollar portfolios, holds around 50 patents, and leads cross-business innovation efforts that have shifted market share and introduced new memory and security standards. A hands-on engineer who has contributed backend driver work to OpenStack Cinder, Tom combines technical rigor with coaching and creativity—running innovation classes, mentoring leaders, and fostering high-performing teams. Known for an entrepreneurial appetite for calculated risk, he pairs rigorous engineering (board design, high-speed signaling, EMC/thermal) with a focus on human psychology to convert ideas into award-winning products and industry-changing releases.
11 years of coding experience
31 years of employment as a software developer
BSEE, Electrical and Software Engineering, BSEE, Electrical and Software Engineering at Texas A&M University
Github Skills (10)
rest-api10
openstack10
api10
replication10
python10
apidoc10
iscsi9
data-storage8
fiber8
fibers8
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (3)
openstack/cinder
Dec 2014 - May 2018
OpenStack Block Storage (Cinder). Mirror of code maintained at opendev.org.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:120 commits in 3 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Tom primarily contributed to the backend functionality of the Dell EMC Storage Center driver within the OpenStack Cinder repository. Their work involved implementing and updating features for the driver, including replication support, and live volume functionality. They also addressed API changes and implemented fixes to resolve snapshot and retype issues, demonstrating a focus on maintaining and enhancing the stability and functionality of the driver for the Dell EMC platform. The user's changes involved both enhancements and bug fixes to the existing code.
block-storageopenstack
NetApp/cinder
May 2015 - Nov 2016
Contributions:4 commits in 1 year 6 months
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