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 lively 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 workplaces. A summer season meetup will convey the cohort collectively to attach in particular person.
The Objective
Ethereum continues to evolve; every improve, analysis initiative, and experiment depends upon 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 underneath the steering of skilled mentors inside Ethereum’s open, collaborative surroundings.
Who Ought to Apply
This system is meant for college college students or latest 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 stage and wish to deepen that understanding via utilized work. Candidates must be self-directed and cozy exploring unfamiliar methods.
Software Course of
Functions are open now via December 1, 2025. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interviews over the following two months, with ultimate picks 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 looking for interns. Every position is linked to an EF group or initiative with lively tasks. Candidates ought to evaluation the complete 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 essential 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 properly examined, coordinated, and protected fork on Ethereum. They obtain these targets through customized tooling, deployment scripts, and information assortment pipelines. Moreover, EthPandaOps goals to empower the group to repurpose instruments for their very own wants, lowering general effort whereas guaranteeing 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 applications, philanthropic organizations, and choose business companions.
👉 Apply
Geth (Go-Ethereum)
The go-ethereum group 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 group 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 pondering 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.
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Protocol Consensus
The Protocol Consensus group’s mission is to bridge the hole between the ensures supplied by Ethereum’s consensus protocol as we speak and people mandatory to completely help the community’s long-term values and goals. To maneuver towards this purpose, they deal with actions corresponding to protocol design, theoretical evaluation, specification writing, academia engagement and collaboration with the broader ecosystem to make sure that concepts could be translated into observe.
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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 observe, serving to the group transfer past principle 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 group safeguards Ethereum’s integrity. By coordination, meticulous code opinions, creating superior tooling, and real-world simulations, the group focuses on securing the community and its essential parts. Their hands-on strategy 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. Specifically, the group has a deal with 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) group consists primarily of two tasks: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Exams (EEST).
- The EELS challenge is chargeable for the primary Ethereum protocol reference specification written in Python, which goals in the direction of changing the yellow-paper specification and being an important assist to the EIP course of as a way to present a prototyping framework for brand spanking new updates.
- The EEST challenge is chargeable for the Ethereum protocol reference exams, utilized by all purchasers 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 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 instantly or not directly have an effect on Ethereum contributors. The place potential, 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, 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 chance to contribute meaningfully whereas gaining expertise, mentorship, and context for the way Ethereum is maintained and superior.
Should you’re able to spend your summer season constructing Ethereum, discover the open positions and apply now at: