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 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 might be accomplished remotely or from EF’s places of work. A summer season meetup will convey the cohort collectively to attach in particular person.
The Purpose
Ethereum continues to evolve; every improve, analysis initiative, and experiment is dependent upon folks prepared to dive into complicated issues and assist construct what comes subsequent. The internship is designed to present 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 setting.
Who Ought to Apply
This system is meant for college college students or latest 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 wish to deepen that understanding by utilized work. Candidates needs to be self-directed and comfy exploring unfamiliar methods.
Utility Course of
Purposes are open now by December 1, 2025. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interviews over the following two months, with closing picks introduced by early February. The internship runs for about 12 weeks through the summer season, with versatile begin and finish dates to match educational calendars.
2026 Internship Roles
Groups throughout the EF are in search of interns. Every function is linked to an EF crew or initiative with energetic tasks. Candidates ought to evaluation the total listings on the EF job board for particulars on scope, most well-liked expertise, and instance duties.
Cryptography Analysis
The EF cryptography analysis crew designs and analyzes cryptographic primitives vital to Ethereum’s roadmap, advises protocol and shopper groups on safety selections, and publishes peer-reviewed outcomes that preserve 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 objectives through 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 guaranteeing minimal requirements.
👉 Apply
Funding Coordination
The Strategic Funding Coordination crew helps EF grantees and different important public items tasks safe co-funding from ecosystem grants, authorities applications, philanthropic organizations, and choose business companions.
👉 Apply
Geth (Go-Ethereum)
The go-ethereum crew builds Geth, an Ethereum execution-layer shopper 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 crew 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 quick 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 intently with shopper implementers, researchers, and libp2p maintainers throughout the ecosystem.
👉 Apply
Protocol Consensus
The Protocol Consensus crew’s mission is to bridge the hole between the ensures offered by Ethereum’s consensus protocol at this time and people mandatory to totally assist the community’s long-term values and targets. To maneuver towards this purpose, they deal with actions reminiscent of protocol design, theoretical evaluation, specification writing, academia engagement and collaboration with the broader ecosystem to make sure that concepts might be translated into observe.
👉 Apply
Protocol Prototyping
The Protocol Prototyping crew builds end-to-end implementations of latest concepts for Ethereum’s core protocol. By turning ideas into working prototypes, the crew explores how potential upgrades behave in observe, serving to the neighborhood transfer past idea and hypothesis. Their work exams assumptions, quantifies trade-offs, and uncovers dangers that is probably not obvious from analysis alone.
👉 Apply
Protocol Safety
The Protocol Safety Analysis crew safeguards Ethereum’s integrity. By coordination, meticulous code evaluations, growing superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the crew focuses on securing the community and its vital elements. Their hands-on method consists of managing the bug bounty program, constantly monitoring the community, and collaborating with shopper groups.
👉 Apply
Protocol Snarkification
The Protocol Snarkification is devoted to snarkifying the Ethereum protocol, alongside the Cryptography and zkEVM groups. Particularly, the crew 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) crew consists primarily of two tasks: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Exams (EEST).
The EELS venture is liable 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 in an effort to present a prototyping framework for brand new updates.The EEST venture is liable for the Ethereum protocol reference exams, utilized by all purchasers to detect consensus points throughout new hard-fork implementations and regressions.
The crew additionally helps testing efforts for the consensus-specs, takes care of sustaining and bettering the tooling, frameworks, documentation and steerage required to facilitate the shopper builders with the consumption of the exams.
👉 Apply
Strong Incentives Group
The Strong Incentives Group (RIG) is a analysis crew devoted to the examine of the Ethereum protocol by the lens of mechanism design. Their work maps all of the ways in which incentives instantly or not directly have an effect on Ethereum members. The place potential, the crew 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 can make Ethereum extra scalable, usable, and ubiquitous.
👉 Apply
zkEVM
Bringing zkEVMs to the Ethereum layer 1 is a multi-faceted effort. The zkEVM crew’s work is organized into three core workstreams; real-time proving, shopper 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 possibility to contribute meaningfully whereas gaining expertise, mentorship, and context for the way Ethereum is maintained and superior.
If you happen to’re able to spend your summer season constructing Ethereum, discover the open positions and apply now at:
👉 jobs.lever.co/ethereumfoundation
