diff --git a/backend/danswer/background/update.py b/backend/danswer/background/update.py
index fa990dc39..1837a7ad1 100755
--- a/backend/danswer/background/update.py
+++ b/backend/danswer/background/update.py
@@ -9,6 +9,9 @@ from distributed import LocalCluster
 from sqlalchemy.orm import Session
 
 from danswer.configs.app_configs import NUM_INDEXING_WORKERS
+from danswer.configs.model_configs import (
+    BACKGROUND_JOB_EMBEDDING_MODEL_CPU_CORES_LEFT_UNUSED,
+)
 from danswer.connectors.factory import instantiate_connector
 from danswer.connectors.interfaces import GenerateDocumentsOutput
 from danswer.connectors.interfaces import LoadConnector
@@ -348,6 +351,18 @@ def _run_indexing_entrypoint(index_attempt_id: int) -> None:
     """Entrypoint for indexing run when using dask distributed.
     Wraps the actual logic in a `try` block so that we can catch any exceptions
     and mark the attempt as failed."""
+    import torch
+    import os
+
+    # force torch to use more cores if available. On VMs pytorch only takes
+    # advantage of a single core by default
+    cpu_cores_to_use = max(
+        (os.cpu_count() or 1) - BACKGROUND_JOB_EMBEDDING_MODEL_CPU_CORES_LEFT_UNUSED,
+        torch.get_num_threads(),
+    )
+    logger.info(f"Setting task to use {cpu_cores_to_use} threads")
+    torch.set_num_threads(cpu_cores_to_use)
+
     try:
         # set the indexing attempt ID so that all log messages from this process
         # will have it added as a prefix
diff --git a/backend/danswer/configs/model_configs.py b/backend/danswer/configs/model_configs.py
index bccaa7dfb..2a8f5b4d9 100644
--- a/backend/danswer/configs/model_configs.py
+++ b/backend/danswer/configs/model_configs.py
@@ -30,6 +30,14 @@ ASYM_QUERY_PREFIX = os.environ.get("ASYM_QUERY_PREFIX", "")
 ASYM_PASSAGE_PREFIX = os.environ.get("ASYM_PASSAGE_PREFIX", "")
 # Purely an optimization, memory limitation consideration
 BATCH_SIZE_ENCODE_CHUNKS = 8
+# This controls the number of pytorch "threads" to allocate to the embedding
+# model. Specifically, this is computed as `num_cpu_cores - BACKGROUND_JOB_EMBEDDING_MODEL_CPU_CORES_LEFT_UNUSED`.
+# This is useful for limiting the number of CPU cores that the background job consumes to leave some
+# compute for other processes (most importantly the api_server and web_server).
+BACKGROUND_JOB_EMBEDDING_MODEL_CPU_CORES_LEFT_UNUSED = int(
+    os.environ.get("BACKGROUND_JOB_EMBEDDING_MODEL_CPU_CORES_LEFT_UNUSED") or 1
+)
+
 
 # Cross Encoder Settings
 SKIP_RERANKING = os.environ.get("SKIP_RERANKING", "").lower() == "true"
diff --git a/deployment/docker_compose/docker-compose.dev.yml b/deployment/docker_compose/docker-compose.dev.yml
index 02b61aea8..f25550435 100644
--- a/deployment/docker_compose/docker-compose.dev.yml
+++ b/deployment/docker_compose/docker-compose.dev.yml
@@ -91,6 +91,7 @@ services:
       - ASYM_PASSAGE_PREFIX=${ASYM_PASSAGE_PREFIX:-}
       - SKIP_RERANKING=${SKIP_RERANKING:-}
       - EDIT_KEYWORD_QUERY=${EDIT_KEYWORD_QUERY:-}
+      - BACKGROUND_JOB_EMBEDDING_MODEL_CPU_CORES_LEFT_UNUSED=${BACKGROUND_JOB_EMBEDDING_MODEL_CPU_CORES_LEFT_UNUSED:-}
       # Set to debug to get more fine-grained logs
       - LOG_LEVEL=${LOG_LEVEL:-info}
     volumes: