diff --git a/.circleci/config.yml b/.circleci/config.yml
index 6d9ae3c84226c..e2f54c0665c78 100644
--- a/.circleci/config.yml
+++ b/.circleci/config.yml
@@ -61,6 +61,8 @@ jobs:
       - OPENBLAS_NUM_THREADS: 2
       - CONDA_ENV_NAME: testenv
       - LOCK_FILE: build_tools/circle/doc_linux-64_conda.lock
+      # Disable sphinx parallelism to avoid EOFError or job stalling in CircleCI
+      - SPHINX_NUMJOBS: 1
     steps:
       - checkout
       - run: ./build_tools/circle/checkout_merge_commit.sh
diff --git a/doc/Makefile b/doc/Makefile
index 5b3ebc70d25fb..02656feba0710 100644
--- a/doc/Makefile
+++ b/doc/Makefile
@@ -8,12 +8,10 @@ PAPER         =
 BUILDDIR      = _build
 
 # Disable multiple jobs on OSX
-# FIXME: disable completely the parallel build to investigate the EOFError and
-# OSError observe in CircleCI
 ifeq ($(shell uname), Darwin)
 	SPHINX_NUMJOBS ?= 1
 else
-	SPHINX_NUMJOBS ?= 1
+	SPHINX_NUMJOBS ?= auto
 endif
 
 ifneq ($(EXAMPLES_PATTERN),)