diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 7173e6d85579..c38dc19b4b4a 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -131,6 +131,12 @@ subsequent Velox builds can use the installed packages.
 *You can reuse `DEPENDENCY_INSTALL` and `INSTALL_PREFIX` for Velox clients such as Prestissimo
 by specifying a common shared directory.`*
 
+The build parallelism for dependencies can be controlled by the `BUILD_THREADS` environment
+variable and overrides the default number of parallel processes used for compiling and linking.
+The default value is the number of cores on your machine.
+This is useful if your machine has lots of cores but no matching memory to process all
+compile and link processes in parallel resulting in OOM kills by the kernel.
+
 ### Setting up on macOS
 
 On a macOS machine (either Intel or Apple silicon) you can setup and then build like so:
diff --git a/scripts/setup-centos9.sh b/scripts/setup-centos9.sh
index cac900631024..6168c51488a1 100755
--- a/scripts/setup-centos9.sh
+++ b/scripts/setup-centos9.sh
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ set -efx -o pipefail
 # so that some low level types are the same size. Also, disable warnings.
 SCRIPTDIR=$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")
 source $SCRIPTDIR/setup-helper-functions.sh
-NPROC=$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)
+NPROC=${BUILD_THREADS:-$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)}
 export CXXFLAGS=$(get_cxx_flags) # Used by boost.
 export CFLAGS=${CXXFLAGS//"-std=c++17"/} # Used by LZO.
 CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="${BUILD_TYPE:-Release}"
diff --git a/scripts/setup-helper-functions.sh b/scripts/setup-helper-functions.sh
index 44324ede2516..185a0dae92a2 100755
--- a/scripts/setup-helper-functions.sh
+++ b/scripts/setup-helper-functions.sh
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 
 DEPENDENCY_DIR=${DEPENDENCY_DIR:-$(pwd)/deps-download}
 OS_CXXFLAGS=""
+NPROC=${BUILD_THREADS:-$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)}
 
 function run_and_time {
   time "$@" || (echo "Failed to run $* ." ; exit 1 )
@@ -214,7 +215,7 @@ function cmake_install {
     -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF \
     "$@"
   # Exit if the build fails.
-  cmake --build "${BINARY_DIR}" || { echo 'build failed' ; exit 1; }
+  cmake --build "${BINARY_DIR}" "-j ${NPROC}" || { echo 'build failed' ; exit 1; }
   ${SUDO} cmake --install "${BINARY_DIR}"
 }
 
diff --git a/scripts/setup-macos.sh b/scripts/setup-macos.sh
index efc3ab0f5621..d38f37acc5ef 100755
--- a/scripts/setup-macos.sh
+++ b/scripts/setup-macos.sh
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ PYTHON_VENV=${PYTHON_VENV:-"${SCRIPTDIR}/../.venv"}
 # by tagging the brew packages to be system packages.
 # This is used during package builds.
 export OS_CXXFLAGS=" -isystem $(brew --prefix)/include "
-NPROC=$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)
+NPROC=${BUILD_THREADS:-$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)}
 
 BUILD_DUCKDB="${BUILD_DUCKDB:-true}"
 VELOX_BUILD_SHARED=${VELOX_BUILD_SHARED:-"OFF"} #Build folly shared for use in libvelox.so.
diff --git a/scripts/setup-ubuntu.sh b/scripts/setup-ubuntu.sh
index c2da4e6dec6b..3d3a7898aeac 100755
--- a/scripts/setup-ubuntu.sh
+++ b/scripts/setup-ubuntu.sh
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ source $SCRIPTDIR/setup-helper-functions.sh
 # are the same size.
 COMPILER_FLAGS=$(get_cxx_flags)
 export COMPILER_FLAGS
-NPROC=$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)
+NPROC=${BUILD_THREADS:-$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)}
 BUILD_DUCKDB="${BUILD_DUCKDB:-true}"
 export CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
 VELOX_BUILD_SHARED=${VELOX_BUILD_SHARED:-"OFF"} #Build folly shared for use in libvelox.so.