diff --git a/docker/datahub-ingestion/Dockerfile b/docker/datahub-ingestion/Dockerfile
index d7084986b44263..09797f741a8255 100644
--- a/docker/datahub-ingestion/Dockerfile
+++ b/docker/datahub-ingestion/Dockerfile
@@ -5,7 +5,19 @@ FROM acryldata/datahub-ingestion-base as base
 
 FROM openjdk:11 as prod-build
 COPY . /datahub-src
-RUN cd /datahub-src && ./gradlew :wrapper && ./gradlew :metadata-events:mxe-schemas:build
+# We noticed that the gradle wrapper download failed frequently on in CI on arm64 machines.
+# I suspect this was due because of the QEMU emulation slowdown, combined with the arm64
+# build being starved for CPU by the x86_64 build's codegen step.
+#
+# The middle step will attempt to download gradle wrapper 5 times with exponential backoff.
+# The ./gradlew --version will force the download of the gradle wrapper but is otherwise a no-op.
+# Note that the retry logic will always return success, so we should always attempt to run codegen.
+# Inspired by https://github.com/gradle/gradle/issues/18124#issuecomment-958182335.
+# and https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/82610/378179.
+# This is a workaround for https://github.com/gradle/gradle/issues/18124.
+RUN cd /datahub-src && \
+    (for attempt in 1 2 3 4 5; do ./gradlew --version && break ; echo "Failed to download gradle wrapper (attempt $attempt)" && sleep $((2*2**$attempt)) ; done ) && \
+    ./gradlew :metadata-events:mxe-schemas:build
 
 FROM base as prod-codegen
 COPY --from=prod-build /datahub-src /datahub-src