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 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 deliver the cohort collectively to attach in individual.
The Aim
Ethereum continues to evolve; every improve, analysis initiative, and experiment will depend on folks prepared to dive into complicated 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 below 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 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 need to deepen that understanding via utilized work. Candidates must be self-directed and cozy exploring unfamiliar methods.
Utility Course of
Purposes are open now via December 1, 2025. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interviews over the subsequent two months, with last alternatives 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 tutorial calendars.
2026 Internship Roles
Groups throughout the EF are searching for interns. Every function is related to an EF group or initiative with energetic tasks. Candidates ought to overview the total listings on the EF job board for particulars on scope, most well-liked expertise, and instance duties.
Cryptography Analysis
The EF cryptography analysis group designs and analyzes cryptographic primitives crucial to Ethereum’s roadmap, advises protocol and consumer 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 effectively examined, coordinated, and protected fork on Ethereum. They obtain these objectives by way of customized tooling, deployment scripts, and knowledge 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 group 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 group 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 choose exterior contributions.
👉 Apply
P2P Networking
The P2P Networking group addresses a confirmed bottleneck in Ethereum as we speak: the networking layer. They work on two fronts: bettering 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 group’s mission is to bridge the hole between the ensures offered by Ethereum’s consensus protocol as we speak and people vital to completely help the community’s long-term values and targets. To maneuver towards this objective, they concentrate on actions resembling protocol design, theoretical evaluation, specification writing, academia engagement and collaboration with the broader ecosystem to make sure that concepts could be translated into follow.
👉 Apply
Protocol Prototyping
The Protocol Prototyping group builds end-to-end implementations of recent concepts for Ethereum’s core protocol. By turning ideas into working prototypes, the group explores how potential upgrades behave in follow, 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 group safeguards Ethereum’s integrity. Via coordination, meticulous code opinions, growing superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the group focuses on securing the community and its crucial elements. Their hands-on method 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. Particularly, the group 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) group consists primarily of two tasks: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Checks (EEST).
- The EELS venture is answerable for the primary Ethereum protocol reference specification written in Python, which goals in 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 venture is answerable for the Ethereum protocol reference exams, utilized by all shoppers to detect consensus points throughout new hard-fork implementations and regressions.
The group additionally helps testing efforts for the consensus-specs, takes care of sustaining and bettering 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 group devoted to the research of the Ethereum protocol via the lens of mechanism design. Their work maps all of the ways in which incentives immediately or not directly have an effect on Ethereum individuals. The place doable, the group proposes mechanisms to attain 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 can make Ethereum extra scalable, usable, and ubiquitous.
👉 Apply
zkEVM
Bringing zkEVMs to the Ethereum layer 1 is a multi-faceted effort. The zkEVM group’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 affords an entry level into protocol-level work. It’s a chance to contribute meaningfully whereas gaining expertise, mentorship, and context for a 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:
