Ethereum Foundation is hiring a Protocol Security Researcher in Ethereum Foundation — Europe. The overview below is synthesized from the employer posting on jobs.ashbyhq.com: factual requirements and scope are preserved, but prose is rewritten with editorial context. Verify details and apply via the employer link.
The Ethereum Foundation
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is a global non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Ethereum. Our mission is to help Ethereum remain secure, decentralized, and resilient over the long term by supporting critical protocol work and the broader ecosystem.
The role
Day-to-day scope for the Protocol Security Researcher as described in the posting:
The Protocol Security team helps prevent vulnerabilities from reaching Ethereum mainnet.
We work across the execution layer, consensus layer, networking, specifications, testing, and client implementations to identify security issues before they become production incidents. Our work combines deep protocol knowledge with security research, manual review, fuzzing, AI-assisted analysis, audits, and coordinated disclosure.
We're looking for engineers who already understand Ethereum deeply.
The strongest candidates are already active in Ethereum protocol development. Ideally you have deep experience with the execution layer, consensus layer, specifications, testing infrastructure, or other protocol-critical components.
What you'll work on
Examples include:
- AI-assisted security research and automated bug discovery.
- Reviewing upcoming hardforks.
- Finding vulnerabilities across Ethereum protocol implementations.
- Building and improving fuzzers.
- Improving the team's automation and security tooling.
- Manual security review of Ethereum protocol changes.
- Working closely with Protocol DevOps, Specifications, researchers, and protocol implementers.
- Coordinating responsible disclosure.
- Supporting external audits and audit competitions.
What we're looking for
We're primarily looking for people with deep Ethereum protocol experience.
Ideal backgrounds include:
- Deep familiarity with the execution layer or consensus layer.
- Deep familiarity with EL or CL specifications.
- Experience implementing or reviewing protocol changes.
- Strong understanding of Ethereum networking, consensus, or execution internals.
Security experience should include one or more of:
- AI-assisted security workflows.
- Protocol security research.
- Fuzzing.
- Vulnerability research.
- Manual application security review.
- Building security tooling.
Languages commonly used include Go, Rust, Java, C#, Nim, and Python.
We're much less concerned with a specific number of years than with demonstrated technical depth.
Build a standout application
For the Protocol Security Researcher at Ethereum Foundation, reviewers look for concise evidence over buzzwords. Mirror the language of the posting sparingly, quantify support or delivery outcomes, and show how you handled ambiguity, time-zone collaboration and user empathy. Keep your resume to impact, keep your cover note to one page, and link to artifacts — tickets resolved, docs shipped, dashboards owned — that prove you can operate in a fast-moving Web3 team. Prepare to discuss a time you turned a confusing user report into a clear fix and how you measure quality in support and operations.
Web3 hiring values reliability: on-time follow-through, clear writing, and a track record of improving runbooks and tooling. Treat the application as a work sample. For interviews, be ready to walk through how you prioritize across time zones, handle a difficult user, and decide when to escalate versus resolve directly. Show how you document decisions so the next teammate benefits.
In a distributed Web3 org, trust builds through written clarity. Use the cover note to demonstrate it.