diff --git a/.circleci/config.yml b/.circleci/config.yml
index 325c8b3797..28af4ca7c7 100644
--- a/.circleci/config.yml
+++ b/.circleci/config.yml
@@ -238,7 +238,8 @@ jobs:
             # --verbose prints name of each test (helpful when there are
             # multiple tests in one file)
             # -rA prints summary in the end
-            pipenv run pytest --junitxml=$TEST_OUTPUT/junit.xml --tb=short -s --verbose -rA $TEST_SELECTION $EXTRA_PARAMS
+            # -n4 uses four processes to run tests via pytest-xdist
+            pipenv run pytest --junitxml=$TEST_OUTPUT/junit.xml --tb=short -s --verbose -n4 -rA $TEST_SELECTION $EXTRA_PARAMS
       - run:
           # CircleCI artifacts are preserved one file at a time, so skipping
           # this step isn't a good idea. If you want to extract the