diff --git a/dockerfiles/Dockerfile.ray-worker-strixhalo b/dockerfiles/Dockerfile.ray-worker-strixhalo
index ab3402c..e4d729e 100644
--- a/dockerfiles/Dockerfile.ray-worker-strixhalo
+++ b/dockerfiles/Dockerfile.ray-worker-strixhalo
@@ -75,9 +75,13 @@ RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/home/ray/.cache/uv,uid=1000,gid=1000 \
         'accelerate>=0.25.0,<1.0' \
         'sentence-transformers>=2.3.0,<3.0' \
         'httpx>=0.27.0,<1.0' \
-        'numpy>=1.26.0,<2.0' \
         'scipy>=1.11.0,<2.0'
 
+# FIX: Ray base image has pandas 1.5.3 which is incompatible with numpy 2.x
+# The TheRock PyTorch wheels require numpy 2.x, so upgrade pandas to match
+RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/home/ray/.cache/uv,uid=1000,gid=1000 \
+    uv pip install --system 'pandas>=2.0.0,<3.0'
+
 # Pre-download common models for faster cold starts (optional, increases image size)
 # RUN python3 -c "from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer; SentenceTransformer('BAAI/bge-large-en-v1.5')"