The Ethereum Basis has opened functions 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 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 workplaces. A summer season 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 prepared to dive into advanced 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 below the steerage of skilled mentors inside Ethereum’s open, collaborative setting.
Who Ought to Apply
This system is meant for college college students or current graduates captivated 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 cozy 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 subsequent two months, with remaining picks introduced by early February. The internship runs for roughly 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 in search of interns. Every position is linked to an EF workforce or initiative with lively tasks. 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 workforce 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 effectively examined, coordinated, and secure fork on Ethereum. They obtain these objectives through customized tooling, deployment scripts, and information assortment pipelines. Moreover, EthPandaOps goals to empower the neighborhood 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 consumer 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 right now: 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 consumer 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 offered by Ethereum’s consensus protocol right now and people obligatory to completely assist the community’s long-term values and aims. 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 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 neighborhood transfer past idea 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 workforce safeguards Ethereum’s integrity. By means of coordination, meticulous code opinions, growing superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the workforce focuses on securing the community and its essential parts. Their hands-on strategy contains 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 workforce 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) workforce consists primarily of two tasks: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Checks (EEST).
- The EELS undertaking is accountable for the principle Ethereum protocol reference specification written in Python, which goals in direction of changing the yellow-paper specification and being an important help to the EIP course of to be able to present a prototyping framework for brand new updates.
- The EEST undertaking is accountable for the Ethereum protocol reference exams, utilized by all purchasers 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 steerage required to facilitate the consumer builders with the consumption of the exams.
👉 Apply
Strong Incentives Group
The Strong Incentives Group (RIG) is a analysis workforce devoted to the examine of the Ethereum protocol by way of the lens of mechanism design. Their work maps all of the ways in which incentives straight or not directly have an effect on Ethereum individuals. The place attainable, 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, consumer and protocol integration, and financial incentives and safety.
👉 Apply
A Path Into the Protocol Layer
The EF Internship Program provides 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.
If you happen to’re able to spend your summer season constructing Ethereum, discover the open positions and apply now at:
