diff --git a/board/opentrons/ot2/rootfs-overlay/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/user-packages.pth b/board/opentrons/ot2/rootfs-overlay/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/user-packages.pth
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..bd72eda070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/board/opentrons/ot2/rootfs-overlay/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/user-packages.pth
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+# We've configured pip so that when a user SSHes in and does `pip install foo`,
+# pip installs the package in a custom path.
+# This file makes sure Python knows to look for packages there.
+
+/var/user-packages/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages