diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
index 7e25738d94f..0aa785de962 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
@@ -86,6 +86,9 @@ Release 2.1.1-beta - UNRELEASED
     MAPREDUCE-5454. TestDFSIO fails intermittently on JDK7 (Karthik Kambatla
     via Sandy Ryza)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-5001. LocalJobRunner has race condition resulting in job
+    failures (Sandy Ryza via jlowe)
+
 Release 2.1.0-beta - 2013-08-22
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
@@ -1173,6 +1176,9 @@ Release 0.23.10 - UNRELEASED
 
     MAPREDUCE-5440. TestCopyCommitter Fails on JDK7 (Robert Parker via jlowe)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-5001. LocalJobRunner has race condition resulting in job
+    failures (Sandy Ryza via jlowe)
+
 Release 0.23.9 - 2013-07-08
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/Cluster.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/Cluster.java
index e93f2736044..2fcc0461c39 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/Cluster.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/Cluster.java
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 
 package org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce;
 
+import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.net.InetSocketAddress;
 import java.security.PrivilegedExceptionAction;
@@ -181,7 +182,18 @@ public class Cluster {
   public Job getJob(JobID jobId) throws IOException, InterruptedException {
     JobStatus status = client.getJobStatus(jobId);
     if (status != null) {
-      return Job.getInstance(this, status, new JobConf(status.getJobFile()));
+      JobConf conf;
+      try {
+        conf = new JobConf(status.getJobFile());
+      } catch (RuntimeException ex) {
+        // If job file doesn't exist it means we can't find the job
+        if (ex.getCause() instanceof FileNotFoundException) {
+          return null;
+        } else {
+          throw ex;
+        }
+      }
+      return Job.getInstance(this, status, conf);
     }
     return null;
   }