The Ethereum Basis has opened purposes for the 2026 Internship Program: a paid, full-time alternative to work immediately 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 energetic R&D and ecosystem-oriented tasks throughout a variety of focus areas. The internship is open to candidates worldwide and may be accomplished remotely or from EF’s workplaces. A summer season meetup will convey 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 offer rising engineers and researchers a sensible path into that work. Interns contribute to actual tasks below the steering of skilled mentors inside Ethereum’s open, collaborative surroundings.
Who Ought to Apply
This system is meant for college college students or latest graduates captivated 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 wish to deepen that understanding by way of utilized work. Candidates needs to be self-directed and comfy exploring unfamiliar methods.
Software Course of
Functions are open now by way of December 1, 2025. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interviews over the subsequent two months, with last picks introduced by early February. The internship runs for roughly 12 weeks in the course of the summer season, with versatile begin and finish dates to match tutorial calendars.
2026 Internship Roles
Groups throughout the EF are in search of interns. Every position is linked to an EF workforce or initiative with energetic tasks. Candidates ought to evaluation the complete listings on the EF job board for particulars on scope, most popular abilities, and instance duties.
Cryptography Analysis
The EF cryptography analysis workforce designs and analyzes cryptographic primitives crucial to Ethereum’s roadmap, advises protocol and consumer groups on safety selections, and publishes peer-reviewed outcomes that hold Ethereum on the bleeding fringe of cryptography analysis.
👉 Apply
DevOps
EthPandaOps helps guarantee a nicely 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 total effort whereas making certain minimal requirements.
👉 Apply
Funding Coordination
The Strategic Funding Coordination workforce helps EF grantees and different important public items tasks safe co-funding from ecosystem grants, authorities packages, philanthropic organizations, and choose business companions.
👉 Apply
Geth (Go-Ethereum)
The go-ethereum workforce builds Geth, an Ethereum execution-layer consumer written in Go. Throughout 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 at this time: 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 considering 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 offered by Ethereum’s consensus protocol at this time and people mandatory to totally help the community’s long-term values and goals. To maneuver towards this purpose, they deal with actions corresponding to protocol design, theoretical evaluation, specification writing, academia engagement and collaboration with the broader ecosystem to make sure that concepts may be translated into observe.
👉 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 observe, serving to the neighborhood transfer past principle 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. By way of coordination, meticulous code evaluations, creating superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the workforce focuses on securing the community and its crucial elements. Their hands-on method consists of managing the bug bounty program, constantly 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 deal with 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 tasks: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Checks (EEST).
- The EELS venture is accountable for the principle 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 to be able to present a prototyping framework for brand new updates.
- The EEST venture is accountable for the Ethereum protocol reference exams, utilized by all purchasers 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 steering required to facilitate the consumer builders with the consumption of the exams.
👉 Apply
Strong Incentives Group
The Strong Incentives Group (RIG) is a analysis workforce devoted to the examine of the Ethereum protocol by way of the lens of mechanism design. Their work maps all of the ways in which incentives immediately or not directly have an effect on Ethereum individuals. The place potential, the workforce proposes mechanisms to realize 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.
When you’re able to spend your summer season constructing Ethereum, discover the open positions and apply now at:
👉 jobs.lever.co/ethereumfoundation
