The Ethereum Basis has opened functions for the 2026 Internship Program: a paid, full-time alternative to work instantly 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 energetic R&D and ecosystem-oriented tasks 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 season meetup will convey the cohort collectively to attach in individual.
The Purpose
Ethereum continues to evolve; every improve, analysis initiative, and experiment will depend on individuals 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 underneath the steerage of skilled mentors inside Ethereum’s open, collaborative setting.
Who Ought to Apply
This system is meant for college college students or latest 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 stage and wish to deepen that understanding by utilized work. Candidates must be self-directed and cozy exploring unfamiliar programs.
Utility Course of
Functions are open now by December 1, 2025. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interviews over the following two months, with last alternatives introduced by early February. The internship runs for roughly 12 weeks throughout 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 energetic tasks. Candidates ought to evaluate 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 vital to Ethereum’s roadmap, advises protocol and consumer 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 targets through customized tooling, deployment scripts, and knowledge 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 workforce 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 workforce builds Geth, an Ethereum execution-layer consumer 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 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 brief and medium-term ambitions whereas conducting radical, first-principles pondering 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 workforce’s mission is to bridge the hole between the ensures offered by Ethereum’s consensus protocol as we speak and people essential to completely help the community’s long-term values and goals. To maneuver towards this aim, they give attention to actions similar to protocol design, theoretical evaluation, specification writing, academia engagement and collaboration with the broader ecosystem to make sure that concepts could be translated into apply.
👉 Apply
Protocol Prototyping
The Protocol Prototyping workforce builds end-to-end implementations of latest concepts for Ethereum’s core protocol. By turning ideas into working prototypes, the workforce explores how potential upgrades behave in apply, serving to the group transfer past idea and hypothesis. Their work checks 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 way of coordination, meticulous code opinions, creating superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the workforce focuses on securing the community and its vital elements. Their hands-on method contains managing the bug bounty program, constantly 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. Particularly, the workforce 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) workforce consists primarily of two tasks: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Assessments (EEST).
- The EELS challenge is accountable for the principle Ethereum protocol reference specification written in Python, which goals in the direction of changing the yellow-paper specification and being a vital help to the EIP course of to be able to present a prototyping framework for brand spanking new updates.
- The EEST challenge is accountable for the Ethereum protocol reference checks, 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 checks.
👉 Apply
Strong Incentives Group
The Strong Incentives Group (RIG) is a analysis workforce devoted to the research of the Ethereum protocol by 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 potential, the workforce 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 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 the way Ethereum is maintained and superior.
When you’re able to spend your summer season constructing Ethereum, discover the open positions and apply now at: