The Ethereum Basis has opened functions 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 time, contributing to energetic R&D and ecosystem-oriented tasks 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 deliver the cohort collectively to attach in particular person.
The Aim
Ethereum continues to evolve; every improve, analysis initiative, and experiment is determined by individuals prepared 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 tasks beneath the steering of skilled mentors inside Ethereum’s open, collaborative setting.
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 way of utilized work. Candidates needs to be self-directed and comfy exploring unfamiliar methods.
Software Course of
Purposes 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 looking for interns. Every position is linked to an EF workforce or initiative with energetic tasks. Candidates ought to assessment the complete listings on the EF job board for particulars on scope, most well-liked abilities, and instance duties.
Cryptography Analysis
The EF cryptography analysis workforce designs and analyzes cryptographic primitives important 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 properly 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 guaranteeing minimal requirements.
👉 Apply
Funding Coordination
The Strategic Funding Coordination workforce 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 workforce builds Geth, an Ethereum execution-layer shopper written in Go. Inside the EF, they do analysis and growth of the Ethereum protocol. As core builders, they form the protocol and choose exterior contributions.
👉 Apply
P2P Networking
The P2P Networking workforce 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 carefully with shopper implementers, researchers, and libp2p maintainers throughout the ecosystem.
👉 Apply
Protocol Consensus
The Protocol Consensus workforce’s mission is to bridge the hole between the ensures supplied by Ethereum’s consensus protocol as we speak and people essential to totally assist the community’s long-term values and targets. To maneuver towards this objective, they concentrate on actions equivalent to protocol design, theoretical evaluation, specification writing, academia engagement and collaboration with the broader ecosystem to make sure that concepts will be translated into follow.
👉 Apply
Protocol Prototyping
The Protocol Prototyping workforce builds end-to-end implementations of recent concepts for Ethereum’s core protocol. By turning ideas into working prototypes, the workforce explores how potential upgrades behave in follow, serving to the group transfer past concept and hypothesis. Their work exams assumptions, quantifies trade-offs, and uncovers dangers that will not be obvious from analysis alone.
👉 Apply
Protocol Safety
The Protocol Safety Analysis workforce safeguards Ethereum’s integrity. By coordination, meticulous code opinions, creating superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the workforce focuses on securing the community and its important elements. Their hands-on strategy 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 workforce has a concentrate on formal verification utilized to cryptographic protocols and their implementations.
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Protocol Specs & Testing
The Specs and Testing for the Ethereum Execution Layer (STEEL) workforce consists primarily of two tasks: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Assessments (EEST).
- The EELS mission is liable 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 in an effort to present a prototyping framework for brand new updates.
- The EEST mission is liable for the Ethereum protocol reference exams, utilized by all shoppers to detect consensus points throughout new hard-fork implementations and regressions.
The workforce 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 exams.
👉 Apply
Sturdy Incentives Group
The Sturdy Incentives Group (RIG) is a analysis workforce 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 immediately or not directly have an effect on Ethereum contributors. The place doable, the workforce 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 workforce’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 chance to contribute meaningfully whereas gaining expertise, mentorship, and context for the way Ethereum is maintained and superior.
In the event you’re able to spend your summer time constructing Ethereum, discover the open positions and apply now at: