diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index f074414b8..3ad9cc273 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -1491,6 +1491,7 @@ dependencies = [
  "tracing",
  "tracing-opentelemetry",
  "uuid",
+ "which",
 ]
 
 [[package]]
diff --git a/binaries/daemon/Cargo.toml b/binaries/daemon/Cargo.toml
index f580ca308..e2ca4fab4 100644
--- a/binaries/daemon/Cargo.toml
+++ b/binaries/daemon/Cargo.toml
@@ -39,3 +39,4 @@ bincode = "1.3.3"
 async-trait = "0.1.64"
 arrow-schema = { workspace = true }
 aligned-vec = "0.5.0"
+which = "4.3.0"
diff --git a/binaries/daemon/src/spawn.rs b/binaries/daemon/src/spawn.rs
index 1a79bda09..e1e25a776 100644
--- a/binaries/daemon/src/spawn.rs
+++ b/binaries/daemon/src/spawn.rs
@@ -137,7 +137,12 @@ pub async fn spawn_node(
 
             let mut command = if has_python_operator && !has_other_operator {
                 // Use python to spawn runtime if there is a python operator
-                let mut command = tokio::process::Command::new("python3");
+                let python = match which::which("python3") {
+                    Ok(python) => python,
+                    Err(_) => which::which("python")
+                        .context("failed to find `python` or `python3` in dora-daemon path. Make sure that python is available for the daemon.")?,
+                };
+                let mut command = tokio::process::Command::new(python);
                 command.args([
                     "-c",
                     format!("import dora; dora.start_runtime() # {}", node.id).as_str(),