diff --git a/.github/workflows/pytest.yaml b/.github/workflows/pytest.yaml
index 1ed1493c3..636458566 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/pytest.yaml
+++ b/.github/workflows/pytest.yaml
@@ -117,7 +117,13 @@ jobs:
       shell: Rscript {0}
 
     - name: Run test suite using pytest
-      run: pytest ixmp -m "not performance" --verbose -rA --cov-report=xml --color=yes
+      run: |
+        pytest ixmp \
+          -m "not performance" \
+          --color=yes -rA --verbose \
+          --cov-report=xml \
+          --numprocesses=auto
+      shell: bash
 
     - name: Upload test coverage to Codecov.io
       uses: codecov/codecov-action@v3
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 9cdd9662b..951af5da2 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -67,6 +67,7 @@ tests = [
   "pytest-benchmark",
   "pytest-cov",
   "pytest-rerunfailures",
+  "pytest-xdist",
 ]
 
 [project.scripts]