The Ethereum Basis has opened purposes for the 2026 Internship Program: a paid, full-time alternative to work straight 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 tasks throughout a variety of focus areas. The internship is open to candidates worldwide and could be accomplished remotely or from EF’s workplaces. A summer season meetup will deliver the cohort collectively to attach in particular person.
The Purpose
Ethereum continues to evolve; every improve, analysis initiative, and experiment depends upon 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 steerage of skilled mentors inside Ethereum’s open, collaborative atmosphere.
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 stage and need to deepen that understanding by means of utilized work. Candidates must be self-directed and cozy exploring unfamiliar methods.
Software Course of
Functions are open now by means of December 1, 2025. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interviews over the following two months, with last choices introduced by early February. The internship runs for roughly 12 weeks throughout the summer season, with versatile begin and finish dates to match tutorial calendars.
2026 Internship Roles
Groups throughout the EF are searching for interns. Every function is linked to an EF staff or initiative with lively tasks. Candidates ought to overview 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 staff designs and analyzes cryptographic primitives important to Ethereum’s roadmap, advises protocol and consumer groups on safety selections, and publishes peer-reviewed outcomes that maintain Ethereum on the bleeding fringe of cryptography analysis.
👉 Apply
DevOps
EthPandaOps helps guarantee a effectively examined, coordinated, and protected fork on Ethereum. They obtain these objectives by way of customized tooling, deployment scripts, and knowledge assortment pipelines. Moreover, EthPandaOps goals to empower the neighborhood to repurpose instruments for their very own wants, decreasing total effort whereas guaranteeing minimal requirements.
👉 Apply
Funding Coordination
The Strategic Funding Coordination staff helps EF grantees and different important public items tasks safe co-funding from ecosystem grants, authorities applications, philanthropic organizations, and choose industrial companions.
👉 Apply
Geth (Go-Ethereum)
The go-ethereum staff builds Geth, an Ethereum execution-layer consumer written in Go. Throughout the EF, they do analysis and improvement of the Ethereum protocol. As core builders, they form the protocol and choose exterior contributions.
👉 Apply
P2P Networking
The P2P Networking staff addresses a confirmed bottleneck in Ethereum at present: 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 progress. They collaborate carefully with consumer implementers, researchers, and libp2p maintainers throughout the ecosystem.
👉 Apply
Protocol Consensus
The Protocol Consensus staff’s mission is to bridge the hole between the ensures supplied by Ethereum’s consensus protocol at present and people obligatory to completely assist the community’s long-term values and goals. To maneuver towards this aim, they give attention to actions reminiscent of protocol design, theoretical evaluation, specification writing, academia engagement and collaboration with the broader ecosystem to make sure that concepts could be translated into observe.
👉 Apply
Protocol Prototyping
The Protocol Prototyping staff builds end-to-end implementations of recent concepts for Ethereum’s core protocol. By turning ideas into working prototypes, the staff explores how potential upgrades behave in observe, serving to the neighborhood transfer past concept and hypothesis. Their work checks assumptions, quantifies trade-offs, and uncovers dangers that is probably not obvious from analysis alone.
👉 Apply
Protocol Safety
The Protocol Safety Analysis staff safeguards Ethereum’s integrity. By way of coordination, meticulous code opinions, creating superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the staff focuses on securing the community and its important parts. 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. Particularly, the staff 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) staff consists primarily of two tasks: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Exams (EEST).
The EELS undertaking is answerable for the principle Ethereum protocol reference specification written in Python, which goals in direction of changing the yellow-paper specification and being a vital assist to the EIP course of with a view to present a prototyping framework for brand new updates.The EEST undertaking is answerable for the Ethereum protocol reference checks, utilized by all purchasers to detect consensus points throughout new hard-fork implementations and regressions.
The staff 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 checks.
👉 Apply
Strong Incentives Group
The Strong Incentives Group (RIG) is a analysis staff devoted to the examine of the Ethereum protocol by means of the lens of mechanism design. Their work maps all of the ways in which incentives straight or not directly have an effect on Ethereum contributors. The place attainable, the staff proposes mechanisms to realize incentive compatibility and system optimality.
👉 Apply
Stateless Consensus
Stateless Consensus builds superior prototypes and instruments with the first goal of ushering in a stateless Ethereum period, which is able to make Ethereum extra scalable, usable, and ubiquitous.
👉 Apply
zkEVM
Bringing zkEVMs to the Ethereum layer 1 is a multi-faceted effort. The zkEVM staff’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 provides an entry level into protocol-level work. It’s a chance to contribute meaningfully whereas gaining expertise, mentorship, and context for the 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
