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 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 may 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 depends upon folks keen to dive into advanced 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 beneath the steering of skilled mentors inside Ethereum’s open, collaborative surroundings.
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 degree and wish to deepen that understanding by means of utilized work. Candidates needs to be self-directed and comfy 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 subsequent two months, with last picks introduced by early February. The internship runs for about 12 weeks in the course of the summer season, with versatile begin and finish dates to match educational calendars.
2026 Internship Roles
Groups throughout the EF are searching for interns. Every function is linked to an EF crew or initiative with lively tasks. Candidates ought to assessment 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 crew designs and analyzes cryptographic primitives essential to Ethereum’s roadmap, advises protocol and consumer groups on safety decisions, and publishes peer-reviewed outcomes that preserve 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 objectives 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 tasks 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 consumer written in Go. Inside the EF, they do analysis and improvement 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 right this 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 intently with consumer 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 right this moment and people crucial to completely assist the community’s long-term values and targets. 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 may 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 exams 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 way of coordination, meticulous code opinions, growing superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the crew focuses on securing the community and its essential parts. Their hands-on strategy consists of managing the bug bounty program, repeatedly 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 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 tasks: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Assessments (EEST).
The EELS undertaking is chargeable for the principle Ethereum protocol reference specification written in Python, which goals in the direction of changing the yellow-paper specification and being an important help to the EIP course of with a view to present a prototyping framework for brand new updates.The EEST undertaking is chargeable 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 enhancing 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 crew devoted to the research of the Ethereum protocol by means 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 contributors. The place attainable, 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 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 crew’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 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.
For those who’re able to spend your summer season constructing Ethereum, discover the open positions and apply now at:
👉 jobs.lever.co/ethereumfoundation
