We study the behaviour of a single electron transistor (SET) represented by a dissipative tunnel junction between a pair of quantum dots described by two (possibly, different) Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev (SYK) models. A combined influence of the soft collective charge and energy modes on charge transport is discussed, alongside the competing effects of the Coulomb blockade and emergent Kondo resonances which might all conspire to result in a non-monotonic behaviour of the system’s conductance.