diff --git a/cluster_kwargs.yaml b/cluster_kwargs.yaml
index cbae246715..a680f46821 100644
--- a/cluster_kwargs.yaml
+++ b/cluster_kwargs.yaml
@@ -41,6 +41,8 @@ spill_cluster:
 embarrassingly_parallel:
   n_workers: 100
   worker_vm_types: [m6i.xlarge] # 4 CPU, 16 GiB (preferred default instance)
+  worker_options:
+    nthreads: 8  # more threads than cores, much of thread time is download
   backend_options:
     region: "us-east-1"  # Same region as dataset