Protocol Specs & Testing Intern

About the Ethereum Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is a global non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Ethereum and related technologies. Our mission is to do what is best for Ethereum’s long-term success. Our role is to allocate resources to critical projects, to be a valued voice within the Ethereum ecosystem, and to advocate for Ethereum to the outside world.

EF Internship

As part of our mission to advance blockchain systems, interns will contribute to bleeding edge research that spans computer science, distributed systems, crypto-economics, and mechanism design. This program offers a unique opportunity to work closely with Ethereum Foundation researchers, their collaborators, and other contributors across the ecosystem, tackling both foundational and applied research challenges. Interns will also have opportunities to share their findings through ethresear.ch, academic publications, or conference submissions helping shape the future of Ethereum.

Interns can choose to work remotely but are encouraged to work out of an EF office (likely Berlin, Germany). In addition, interns will be invited for an in-person cohort meetup in the summer.

The duration of the internship is 12 weeks during summer 2026.

STEEL team description

The Specifications and Testing for the Ethereum Execution Layer (STEEL) team consists mainly of two projects: Ethereum Execution Layer Specification (EELS) and Ethereum Execution Specification Tests (EEST).

The EELS project is responsible for the main Ethereum protocol reference specification written in Python, which aims towards replacing the yellow-paper specification and being a crucial aid to the EIP process in order to provide a prototyping framework for new updates.

The EEST project is responsible for the Ethereum protocol reference tests, used by all clients to detect consensus issues during new hard-fork implementations and regressions.

The team also supports testing efforts for the consensus-specs, takes care of maintaining and improving the tooling, frameworks, documentation and guidance required to facilitate the client developers with the consumption of the tests, which includes the EEST, the legacy ethereum/tests repository, and also integration tests in the form of various hive simulators.

More on the EF Protocol cluster: https://protocol.ethereum.foundation/

• Experience working in Linux environments
• Proficiency in Python 3.11+, and ideally in tooling like Pytest, Pydantic, and uv
• Foundational knowledge of the Consensus Layer protocol or the EVM

• Conduct original research in areas relevant to Ethereum and decentralized technologies.
• Collaborate with Ethereum Foundation researchers and contributors to address pressing technical and conceptual challenges.
• Contribute to public-facing materials, such as blog posts, white papers, and technical reports, to share research outcomes.
• Engage with the broader research community through discussions, seminars, and collaborations.

• Current university enrollment studying a relevant field such as computer science, cryptography, mathematics, or economics. Very recent graduates (~1 year) may also be considered.
• Demonstrated interest in Ethereum, blockchains, and decentralized technologies.

Important dates:

This application closes on Dec 1st, 2025. Applicants will receive decisions by January 30th, 2026.

Note on AI-assisted review:

The hiring team will use an AI-assisted tool to help us review resumes for this role. Here’s what that means:

- Your resume is anonymized before the AI review.

- We have been assured that your information will not be used to train AI models.

- Human reviewers make all final decisions. The AI tool does not reject or advance candidates automatically.

- The tool simply helps the hiring team manage a large volume of applications by highlighting potential fits.

If you’d like to know more about how the tool works, you can read the Talent Fit AI Brief.