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 time, 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 places of work. A summer time 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 provide rising engineers and researchers a sensible path into that work. Interns contribute to actual tasks underneath 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 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 wish to deepen that understanding by means of utilized work. Candidates needs to be self-directed and cozy exploring unfamiliar techniques.
Utility 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 remaining choices introduced by early February. The internship runs for roughly 12 weeks throughout the summer time, with versatile begin and finish dates to match educational calendars.
2026 Internship Roles
Groups throughout the EF are in search of interns. Every position is linked to an EF staff or initiative with lively tasks. Candidates ought to evaluation the total listings on the EF job board for particulars on scope, most popular abilities, and instance duties.
Cryptography Analysis
The EF cryptography analysis staff designs and analyzes cryptographic primitives essential to Ethereum’s roadmap, advises protocol and shopper groups on safety selections, and publishes peer-reviewed outcomes that maintain Ethereum on the bleeding fringe of cryptography analysis.
DevOps
EthPandaOps helps guarantee a effectively examined, coordinated, and protected fork on Ethereum. They obtain these objectives through customized tooling, deployment scripts, and knowledge assortment pipelines. Moreover, EthPandaOps goals to empower the neighborhood to repurpose instruments for their very own wants, lowering total effort whereas guaranteeing minimal requirements.
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 business companions.
Geth (Go-Ethereum)
The go-ethereum staff builds Geth, an Ethereum execution-layer shopper written in Go. Inside the EF, they do analysis and improvement of the Ethereum protocol. As core builders, they form the protocol and choose exterior contributions.
P2P Networking
The P2P Networking staff addresses a confirmed bottleneck in Ethereum at this time: the networking layer. They work on two fronts: enhancing 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 carefully with shopper implementers, researchers, and libp2p maintainers throughout the ecosystem.
Protocol Consensus
The Protocol Consensus staff’s mission is to bridge the hole between the ensures supplied by Ethereum’s consensus protocol at this time and people mandatory to completely help the community’s long-term values and goals. To maneuver towards this aim, they concentrate on actions resembling protocol design, theoretical evaluation, specification writing, academia engagement and collaboration with the broader ecosystem to make sure that concepts could be translated into follow.
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 follow, serving to the neighborhood transfer past principle and hypothesis. Their work checks assumptions, quantifies trade-offs, and uncovers dangers that might not be obvious from analysis alone.
Protocol Safety
The Protocol Safety Analysis staff safeguards Ethereum’s integrity. Via coordination, meticulous code opinions, growing superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the staff focuses on securing the community and its essential elements. Their hands-on method contains managing the bug bounty program, repeatedly monitoring the community, and collaborating with shopper groups.
Protocol Snarkification
The Protocol Snarkification is devoted to snarkifying the Ethereum protocol, alongside the Cryptography and zkEVM groups. Specifically, the staff has a concentrate on formal verification utilized to cryptographic protocols and their implementations.
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 Checks (EEST).
The EELS mission is answerable 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 support to the EIP course of with a view to present a prototyping framework for brand new updates.The EEST mission 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 enhancing the tooling, frameworks, documentation and steering required to facilitate the shopper builders with the consumption of the checks.
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 instantly or not directly have an effect on Ethereum individuals. The place potential, the staff proposes mechanisms to realize incentive compatibility and system optimality.
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.
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, shopper and protocol integration, and financial incentives and safety.
A Path Into the Protocol Layer
The EF Internship Program affords 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.
Should you’re able to spend your summer time constructing Ethereum, discover the open positions and apply now at:
👉 jobs.lever.co/ethereumfoundation
