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 a part of EF groups for 12 weeks over the summer time, 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 places of work. A summer time meetup will deliver the cohort collectively to attach in individual.
The Purpose
Ethereum continues to evolve; every improve, analysis initiative, and experiment relies on folks keen 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 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 via utilized work. Candidates ought to be self-directed and comfy exploring unfamiliar methods.
Software Course of
Purposes are open now via December 1, 2025. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interviews over the subsequent two months, with closing choices introduced by early February. The internship runs for about 12 weeks through 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 function is related to an EF group or initiative with lively tasks. Candidates ought to evaluation 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 vital to Ethereum’s roadmap, advises protocol and shopper groups on safety selections, and publishes peer-reviewed outcomes that maintain 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 targets by way of customized tooling, deployment scripts, and knowledge assortment pipelines. Moreover, EthPandaOps goals to empower the neighborhood to repurpose instruments for their very own wants, lowering 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 business companions.
👉 Apply
Geth (Go-Ethereum)
The go-ethereum group 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 group addresses a confirmed bottleneck in Ethereum at the moment: 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 progress. They collaborate carefully with shopper 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 at the moment and people obligatory to totally help the community’s long-term values and aims. To maneuver towards this purpose, they deal with actions reminiscent of 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 group builds end-to-end implementations of latest concepts for Ethereum’s core protocol. By turning ideas into working prototypes, the group 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 might not be obvious from analysis alone.
👉 Apply
Protocol Safety
The Protocol Safety Analysis group safeguards Ethereum’s integrity. By coordination, meticulous code critiques, growing superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the group focuses on securing the community and its vital 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 group has a deal with 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 mission is accountable for the primary 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 as a way to present a prototyping framework for brand spanking new updates.
- The EEST mission is accountable 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 enhancing the tooling, frameworks, documentation and steerage required to facilitate the shopper builders with the consumption of the exams.
👉 Apply
Sturdy Incentives Group
The Sturdy 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 instantly or not directly have an effect on Ethereum contributors. The place doable, the group 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 group’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 presents 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:
