Young Software Engineer of the Year awards
Join us on Thursday 25th September 2025 at 6.30pm at the EICC in Edinburgh for the YSE Awards and to celebrate our future young software engineers.
This is the perfect opportunity to take your team, clients and guests out for what will be a memorable evening. Of course, it wouldn’t be the Young Software Engineer of the Year Awards without a champagne reception to kick the night off. We’ll then take our seats for a lavish three course meal, before watching the Awards and hearing from our after-dinner entertainment – more details soon…
The 2025 Awards
The Young Software Engineer (YSE) of the Year Awards have been running for over 30 years, celebrating the talented minds graduating from each of our universities across Scotland.
Awards are given for the best final year BSc undergraduate software projects drawn from across all students studying computer science and software engineering, with prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place and Best Engineering.
Prizes consist of a cash sum and a trophy, kindly sponsored by leading Scottish software companies: Sopra Steria, BCS, Resillion and Leidos.
Judging is conducted by a panel of industry experts, and the criteria used includes Level of Innovation, Technical Difficulty, Level of Knowledge & Previous Research, Commercial/Social Relevance, Quality of Engineering, Planning & Organisation, and Quality of Presentation.
Check out the full shortlist announcement here.
After dinner entertainment
We typically have an After Dinner Speaker to round off our YSE Awards; in the past, we have had everything from comedians like Kevin Bridges, to athletes like Sir Chris Hoy, to motivational speakers like SAS: Who Dares Wins’ Colin Maclachlan, to “People Hacker” Jenny Radcliffe.
Following last year’s successful introduction of live entertainment with the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, however, we’re going down the music route again with a budding Scottish superstar *yet-to-be-revealed*
The music will kick off following the conclusion of the Awards and a welcome from the sponsor, Lloyds Banking Group.
We’re excited for this one!
pricing
- ScotlandIS Member Corporate Table (10): £1900+VAT
- ScotlandIS Member Standard Table (10): £1700+VAT
- ScotlandIS Member Individual Ticket: £170+VAT
- Non-member Corporate Table (10): £2100+VAT
- Non-member Individual Ticket: £210+VAT
Tables and individual tickets can be purchased here.
Get in touch with our Events Producer, Catriona Blair, via catriona.blair@scotlandis.com with any queries.
"The award has been a huge boost for my career so far. It gave me a lot of confidence and definitely helped my applications stand out to employers. It also gave me strong experiences to talk about in interviews.
"The award brought attention to my work beyond university, which was really encouraging. It helped me feel that my project had real-world impact and made me more determined to pursue roles where I can tackle meaningful, real-world problems."
"Thanks once again for putting on a great ScotSoft and sorting me out with a ticket.
"I’m pleased to say I’ll be starting a new role at Lloyds in the next couple of weeks, something that wouldn’t have been possible without the networking opportunities afforded by the event."
“I’ve seen the Young Software Engineer of the Year awards from both sides. The YSE award really helped me get attention from employers in the early stages of my career.
“As an employer, I’m proud to support the awards because it’s important to recognise upcoming talent and it’s been a great way for us to get introductions to these graduates, several of whom we have hired in the past.”
at Zalando (formerly of Amazon)
thanks to our sponsors
After Dinner Entertainment
YSE Brochure
1st prize
2nd prize
3rd prize
