diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index cb452cd1c..6930429b4 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -12,4 +12,5 @@
 /docs/mdbook_bin
 /shotover-proxy/build/packages
 /some_local_file
-/test-helpers/src/connection/kafka/node/node_modules
\ No newline at end of file
+/test-helpers/src/connection/kafka/node/node_modules
+/test-helpers/j4rs
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/test-helpers/Cargo.toml b/test-helpers/Cargo.toml
index c0cb615a5..c07f36a17 100644
--- a/test-helpers/Cargo.toml
+++ b/test-helpers/Cargo.toml
@@ -42,3 +42,6 @@ rustls-pemfile = "2.0.0"
 tokio-tungstenite = { version = "0.24", features = ["rustls-tls-native-roots"] }
 pretty_assertions.workspace = true
 serde.workspace = true
+
+[build-dependencies]
+j4rs = "0.21.0"
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/test-helpers/build.rs b/test-helpers/build.rs
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..21a84f431
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test-helpers/build.rs
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+fn main() {
+    println!("cargo:rerun-if-changed=build.rs");
+
+    j4rs::Jvm::copy_j4rs_libs_under("j4rs").unwrap();
+}
diff --git a/test-helpers/src/connection/java.rs b/test-helpers/src/connection/java.rs
index 25ac455c9..ee9c34fc2 100644
--- a/test-helpers/src/connection/java.rs
+++ b/test-helpers/src/connection/java.rs
@@ -11,7 +11,12 @@ impl Jvm {
     /// Construct a JVM, downloads the list of deps from the maven repository.
     /// Example dep string: "org.slf4j:slf4j-api:1.7.36"
     pub(crate) fn new(deps: &[&str]) -> Self {
-        let jvm = Rc::new(JvmBuilder::new().build().unwrap());
+        let jvm = Rc::new(
+            JvmBuilder::new()
+                .with_base_path("../test-helpers/j4rs")
+                .build()
+                .unwrap(),
+        );
 
         for dep in deps {
             jvm.deploy_artifact(&MavenArtifact::from(*dep)).unwrap();