diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/rm/RMContainerAllocator.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/rm/RMContainerAllocator.java
index 543b20ec01500..3da62bf1cb255 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/rm/RMContainerAllocator.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/rm/RMContainerAllocator.java
@@ -1001,11 +1001,17 @@ private void handleUpdatedNodes(AllocateResponse response) {
   }
 
   private void handleJobPriorityChange(AllocateResponse response) {
-    Priority priorityFromResponse = Priority.newInstance(response
-        .getApplicationPriority().getPriority());
+    Priority priority = Priority.newInstance(0);
+    try {
+      priority = Priority.newInstance(response
+              .getApplicationPriority().getPriority());
+    } catch (Exception e) {
+      // palantir-hadoop only: ignore NPEs for compatibility with older clusters, along with
+      // any other exceptions to reduce iteration cycles
+    }
 
     // Update the job priority to Job directly.
-    getJob().setJobPriority(priorityFromResponse);
+    getJob().setJobPriority(priority);
   }
 
   @Private
diff --git a/palantir/CHANGELOG.md b/palantir/CHANGELOG.md
index 469d1bc3a309a..5e14c88945748 100644
--- a/palantir/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/palantir/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ Based on Apache Hadoop tag `release-2.9.2-RC0`.
 * Manual backport of [HADOOP-15938](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-15938)
 * Comment out s3guard quantile creation in S3AInstrumentation as more aggressive version of [HADOOP-16278](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-16278)
 * Use wildfly-openssl in Azure Blob Store connector
+* Catch NPEs in RMContainerAllocator#handleJobPriorityChange for compatibility with older clusters
 
 # 2.9.2-palantir.9