The Ethereum Basis has opened purposes 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 time, contributing to energetic R&D and ecosystem-oriented initiatives throughout a variety of focus areas. The internship is open to candidates worldwide and will be accomplished remotely or from EF’s places of work. A summer time meetup will carry the cohort collectively to attach in particular person.
The Purpose
Ethereum continues to evolve; every improve, analysis initiative, and experiment is dependent upon 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 initiatives beneath 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 keen about 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 way of utilized work. Candidates must be self-directed and comfy exploring unfamiliar programs.
Utility Course of
Functions are open now by way of 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 in the course of the summer time, with versatile begin and finish dates to match educational calendars.
2026 Internship Roles
Groups throughout the EF are searching for interns. Every position is related to an EF crew or initiative with energetic initiatives. Candidates ought to evaluation the total listings on the EF job board for particulars on scope, most well-liked abilities, and instance duties.
Cryptography Analysis
The EF cryptography analysis crew designs and analyzes cryptographic primitives important to Ethereum’s roadmap, advises protocol and shopper groups on safety decisions, and publishes peer-reviewed outcomes that hold 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 group to repurpose instruments for their very own wants, decreasing general effort whereas making certain 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 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 as we speak: 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 considering 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 as we speak and people mandatory to completely assist the community’s long-term values and goals. To maneuver towards this purpose, 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 will 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 principle 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 way of coordination, meticulous code critiques, growing superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the crew focuses on securing the community and its important parts. Their hands-on method contains 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 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) crew consists primarily of two initiatives: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Assessments (EEST).
The EELS mission is chargeable for the primary Ethereum protocol reference specification written in Python, which goals in direction of changing the yellow-paper specification and being an important support to the EIP course of with a view to present a prototyping framework for brand spanking new updates.The EEST mission is chargeable for the Ethereum protocol reference exams, utilized by all shoppers 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 exams.
👉 Apply
Strong Incentives Group
The Strong Incentives Group (RIG) is a analysis crew devoted to the research of the Ethereum protocol by way 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 contributors. The place attainable, the crew proposes mechanisms to attain 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 affords an entry level into protocol-level work. It’s a possibility 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
