The Ethereum Basis has opened functions for the 2026 Internship Program: a paid, full-time alternative to work instantly with groups advancing the Ethereum protocol and ecosystem.
Interns will be a part of EF groups for 12 weeks over the summer season, contributing to lively R&D and ecosystem-oriented initiatives throughout a variety of focus areas. The internship is open to candidates worldwide and might be accomplished remotely or from EF’s workplaces. A summer season meetup will deliver the cohort collectively to attach in individual.
The Objective
Ethereum continues to evolve; every improve, analysis initiative, and experiment relies on folks keen to dive into complicated issues and assist construct what comes subsequent. The internship is designed to provide rising engineers and researchers a sensible path into that work. Interns contribute to actual initiatives below the steerage of skilled mentors inside Ethereum’s open, collaborative surroundings.
Who Ought to Apply
This system is meant for college college students or current graduates obsessed with Ethereum, open-source contributions, and decentralized applied sciences. Excessive-signal candidates will have already got some understanding of Ethereum at a technical degree and need to deepen that understanding by means of utilized work. Candidates ought to be self-directed and cozy exploring unfamiliar methods.
Software Course of
Purposes are open now by means of December 1, 2025. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interviews over the following two months, with ultimate choices introduced by early February. The internship runs for roughly 12 weeks through the summer season, with versatile begin and finish dates to match tutorial calendars.
2026 Internship Roles
Groups throughout the EF are looking for interns. Every position is related to an EF workforce or initiative with lively initiatives. Candidates ought to evaluate the complete listings on the EF job board for particulars on scope, most well-liked expertise, and instance duties.
Cryptography Analysis
The EF cryptography analysis workforce designs and analyzes cryptographic primitives important to Ethereum’s roadmap, advises protocol and consumer groups on safety decisions, and publishes peer-reviewed outcomes that maintain Ethereum on the bleeding fringe of cryptography analysis.
👉 Apply
DevOps
EthPandaOps helps guarantee a properly examined, coordinated, and protected fork on Ethereum. They obtain these targets by way of customized tooling, deployment scripts, and information assortment pipelines. Moreover, EthPandaOps goals to empower the neighborhood to repurpose instruments for their very own wants, decreasing general effort whereas making certain minimal requirements.
👉 Apply
Funding Coordination
The Strategic Funding Coordination workforce helps EF grantees and different important public items initiatives safe co-funding from ecosystem grants, authorities applications, philanthropic organizations, and choose business companions.
👉 Apply
Geth (Go-Ethereum)
The go-ethereum workforce builds Geth, an Ethereum execution-layer consumer written in Go. Inside the EF, they do analysis and growth of the Ethereum protocol. As core builders, they form the protocol and choose exterior contributions.
👉 Apply
P2P Networking
The P2P Networking workforce addresses a confirmed bottleneck in Ethereum immediately: the networking layer. They work on two fronts: bettering the present stack to ship on Ethereum’s brief and medium-term ambitions whereas conducting radical, first-principles pondering to revamp the networking layer from scratch for long-term scalability and development. They collaborate carefully with consumer implementers, researchers, and libp2p maintainers throughout the ecosystem.
👉 Apply
Protocol Consensus
The Protocol Consensus workforce’s mission is to bridge the hole between the ensures supplied by Ethereum’s consensus protocol immediately and people needed to totally help the community’s long-term values and goals. To maneuver towards this aim, they give attention to actions corresponding to protocol design, theoretical evaluation, specification writing, academia engagement and collaboration with the broader ecosystem to make sure that concepts might be translated into apply.
👉 Apply
Protocol Prototyping
The Protocol Prototyping workforce builds end-to-end implementations of recent concepts for Ethereum’s core protocol. By turning ideas into working prototypes, the workforce explores how potential upgrades behave in apply, serving to the neighborhood transfer past idea and hypothesis. Their work exams assumptions, quantifies trade-offs, and uncovers dangers that will not be obvious from analysis alone.
👉 Apply
Protocol Safety
The Protocol Safety Analysis workforce safeguards Ethereum’s integrity. Via coordination, meticulous code opinions, creating superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the workforce focuses on securing the community and its important parts. Their hands-on strategy contains managing the bug bounty program, repeatedly monitoring the community, and collaborating with consumer groups.
👉 Apply
Protocol Snarkification
The Protocol Snarkification is devoted to snarkifying the Ethereum protocol, alongside the Cryptography and zkEVM groups. Specifically, the workforce has a give attention to formal verification utilized to cryptographic protocols and their implementations.
👉 Apply
Protocol Specs & Testing
The Specs and Testing for the Ethereum Execution Layer (STEEL) workforce consists primarily of two initiatives: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Exams (EEST).
The EELS challenge is answerable for the primary Ethereum protocol reference specification written in Python, which goals in the direction of changing the yellow-paper specification and being a vital help to the EIP course of with the intention to present a prototyping framework for brand new updates.The EEST challenge is answerable for the Ethereum protocol reference exams, utilized by all shoppers to detect consensus points throughout new hard-fork implementations and regressions.
The workforce additionally helps testing efforts for the consensus-specs, takes care of sustaining and bettering the tooling, frameworks, documentation and steerage required to facilitate the consumer builders with the consumption of the exams.
👉 Apply
Sturdy Incentives Group
The Sturdy Incentives Group (RIG) is a analysis workforce devoted to the research of the Ethereum protocol by means of the lens of mechanism design. Their work maps all of the ways in which incentives instantly or not directly have an effect on Ethereum contributors. The place potential, the workforce proposes mechanisms to attain incentive compatibility and system optimality.
👉 Apply
zkEVM
Bringing zkEVMs to the Ethereum layer 1 is a multi-faceted effort. The zkEVM workforce’s work is organized into three core workstreams; real-time proving, consumer and protocol integration, and financial incentives and safety.
👉 Apply
A Path Into the Protocol Layer
The EF Internship Program gives an entry level into protocol-level work. It’s a chance to contribute meaningfully whereas gaining expertise, mentorship, and context for a way Ethereum is maintained and superior.
For those who’re able to spend your summer season constructing Ethereum, discover the open positions and apply now at:
👉 jobs.lever.co/ethereumfoundation
