Work
Twelve years as a Refinery Optimization Engineer. The job isn't about running the equipment — it's about the economics: given crude prices, product markets, and physical constraints, what's the most profitable thing to make right now? The problem changes daily. I've been solving it for over a decade and it still keeps me interested.
The core skill is holding a complex system in your head — all its constraints, its tradeoffs, the levers you can actually pull — and finding the path that extracts the most value. It's applied math at industrial scale, which sounds impressive until you're three hours into a spreadsheet at 11pm.
I picked up Python during COVID when I got tired of waiting for someone else to build the tools I needed. Same instinct that makes me fix things around the house rather than call someone, or build furniture when I'd rather have it a specific way. Find the constraint. Figure out the cleanest way around it. Resist the urge to over-engineer.
Projects
Things I built because I wanted them to exist.
Built an RFID-triggered music player for my kids using a Raspberry Pi. Tap a card, play an album. Simple enough that a four-year-old can run it; complicated enough that it took way longer than expected.
View on GitHub →Monitors SEC EDGAR filings to detect corporate events with trading implications. Built it to learn the data, not to get rich. Kept the former, managed the latter.
View on GitHub →Reading
What's on the nightstand.
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Say Hi
- Email justin@justinbarak.com
- LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/justin-barak-jb2
- GitHub github.com/justinbarak
- Goodreads goodreads.com/justin-barak