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 time, contributing to lively R&D and ecosystem-oriented initiatives 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 is dependent upon individuals keen to dive into advanced 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 initiatives underneath 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 enthusiastic about 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 utilized work. Candidates ought to be self-directed and comfy exploring unfamiliar techniques.
Software Course of
Purposes are open now by 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 about 12 weeks throughout the summer time, with versatile begin and finish dates to match tutorial calendars.
2026 Internship Roles
Groups throughout the EF are looking for interns. Every function is related to an EF crew or initiative with lively initiatives. Candidates ought to evaluate the complete listings on the EF job board for particulars on scope, most popular 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 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 secure fork on Ethereum. They obtain these targets by way of customized tooling, deployment scripts, and information assortment pipelines. Moreover, EthPandaOps goals to empower the group to repurpose instruments for their very own wants, lowering total effort whereas guaranteeing minimal requirements.
👉 Apply
Funding Coordination
The Strategic Funding Coordination crew helps EF grantees and different important public items initiatives safe co-funding from ecosystem grants, authorities packages, philanthropic organizations, and choose industrial 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 growth of the Ethereum protocol. As core builders, they form the protocol and decide exterior contributions.
👉 Apply
P2P Networking
The P2P Networking crew addresses a confirmed bottleneck in Ethereum at the moment: the networking layer. They work on two fronts: enhancing 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 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 supplied by Ethereum’s consensus protocol at the moment and people vital to completely help the community’s long-term values and goals. To maneuver towards this purpose, they concentrate on actions corresponding to 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 crew builds end-to-end implementations of recent concepts for Ethereum’s core protocol. By turning ideas into working prototypes, the crew explores how potential upgrades behave in observe, serving to the group transfer past idea and hypothesis. Their work assessments assumptions, quantifies trade-offs, and uncovers dangers that might not be obvious from analysis alone.
👉 Apply
Protocol Safety
The Protocol Safety Analysis crew safeguards Ethereum’s integrity. By means of coordination, meticulous code evaluations, growing superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the crew focuses on securing the community and its vital parts. Their hands-on method consists of managing the bug bounty program, repeatedly 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. Specifically, the crew has a concentrate on 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 initiatives: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Checks (EEST).
The EELS challenge is answerable for the primary Ethereum protocol reference specification written in Python, which goals in direction of changing the yellow-paper specification and being an important assist to the EIP course of to be able to present a prototyping framework for brand spanking new updates.The EEST challenge is answerable for the Ethereum protocol reference assessments, 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 enhancing the tooling, frameworks, documentation and steerage required to facilitate the shopper builders with the consumption of the assessments.
👉 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 straight or not directly have an effect on Ethereum contributors. The place attainable, the crew 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 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 presents 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.
Should you’re able to spend your summer time constructing Ethereum, discover the open positions and apply now at:
👉 jobs.lever.co/ethereumfoundation
