Chennai, Nov. 2025
This year, PROD, the software engineering olympiad for high schoolers, is going international and inviting English-speaking students in years 8 to 12 from all over the world to join in.
Large-scale software engineering is the process of creating software and technology by extended teams from the world’s biggest IT companies.
PROD is the world’s first contest where students are exposed to real-life business cases from large tech companies, as well as explore software systems and examples of business process automation, and develop their own apps and services that help organizations improve their performance and optimize costs. Participants will gain an insight into how industry leaders work to handle business challenges more effectively in the future.
At the PROD Olympiad, high schoolers from all over the world will have an opportunity to dive into the high-potential IT industry even before enrolling in a university, which can be instrumental in shaping their future career paths. Students will be able to develop their practical skills, obtain valuable insights from industry leaders, gain team experience, and work with their peers from other countries.
All rounds of the PROD Olympiad – except for the final one – are held online, which means that students from anywhere in the world can participate. Finalists will be invited to Moscow to take part in the team stage, with their food and accommodation expenses covered by the contest organizers.
The PROD Olympiad is held by leading Russian organizations and the academic community:
● Central University, a leader in practice-oriented education, one of the top higher education institutions in Russia
● T-Technologies, a pioneer of the global fintech industry and one of the world’s largest digital financial ecosystems
● The Faculty of Computer Science of HSE University, one of the biggest universities in Russia.
Participants will have a chance to work under the guidance of seasoned IT professionals, trailblazers of the fintech industry in Russia and, in many respects, in the world, too. T-Technologies, which has the digital ecosystem of Russia’s largest online bank at its core, is creating mobile and digital services that serve as benchmarks both in Russia and globally. When working on their project, teams will be guided by professional mentors from T-Technologies, whose daily job is to develop services that stay ahead of the global competition in terms of technological sophistication and performance.
Registration will continue until December 2 on the website of the PROD Olympiad. Participants are not required to have strong programming skills: logical thinking and basic knowledge of computer science should be sufficient.
It is already the third PROD event, but this year is the first time the contest goes international and becomes available to high schoolers from all over the world in two languages, English and Russian.
In 2024, PROD received over 10,000 applications, and more than 4,000 Russian-speaking students from Russia and 23 other countries were selected. There were participants from Great Britain, Germany, France, Canada, China, and even as far as Peru. The final round of the contest gathered 235 high schoolers from 49 Russian regions and Belarus. Of them, 57 were winners and medalists.
The PROD Olympiad is organized in rounds, with leading professors and experts from Central University, T-Technologies, and HSE University supporting the participants at each step of the way:
● December 5–8: the first preliminary round – a test in basic math and programming knowledge.
● January 15–25: the second preliminary round – a case study covering one or several tracks (frontend, backend, mobile app development, and a new track, MLOps engineering). This round is open to winners and runners-up of the first round of 2025 and the second round of 2024, as well as winners of previous PROD hackathons.
● February 12–24: the individual stage of the final round – a small project assigned by the contest, to be completed by the student alone.
● March 13–17: the team stage of the final round – presentation of a project developed under the guidance of mentors (experienced developers) to a panel of judges, to be made together with the team.
● March 18: the awards ceremony in Moscow.
Rewards for winners and runners-up of the PROD Olympiad:
● Free Russian language courses for foreign students, available to participants aged 18+ after high school (HSE University’s Russian Language and Cultural Linguistics Program).
● Tuition-free enrollment at Central University, one of Russia’s top educational institutions, or tuition discounts for HSE University’s Information Product Design and Development program or other fee-based programs offered by its Faculty of Computer Science.
● Fast-track process for an internship at T-Technologies.
● Branded PROD Olympiad merch.
Central University is an innovative Russian university where the STEM approach is integrated into higher education curricula. It is a practice-oriented university established in partnership with over 60 major Russian organizations. Ranked among the top 10 hardest Russian universities to get into, it is one of the best higher education institutions in the country. Central University led three national teams to victory at international contests, including the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI) in 2024 and 2025 and the International Cybersecurity Olympiad (ICO) in 2025. The teams demonstrated a very high level of competence.
T-Technologies is building an ecosystem of financial and lifestyle services for individuals and businesses that can be accessed through mobile apps and digital services. At the core of the ecosystem is one of the world’s largest online banks with 53 million customers.
