diff --git a/sagemaker-serve/pyproject.toml b/sagemaker-serve/pyproject.toml
index 6be2f1ba81..5ac819cc95 100644
--- a/sagemaker-serve/pyproject.toml
+++ b/sagemaker-serve/pyproject.toml
@@ -69,6 +69,13 @@ test = [
     "onnxruntime",
     "torch>=2.0.0",
     "tritonclient[http]",
+    # pandas is pulled in transitively (e.g. via mlflow). Cap below 3.1.0:
+    # pandas 3.1.0 ships wheels built against a newer NumPy C-ABI than the
+    # py311/py312 test envs resolve, so it fails to import ("ImportError:
+    # C extension: None not built") at pytest collection time. The previous
+    # release 3.0.6 was passing on py311/py312; py310 stays on the 2.x line
+    # (2.3.3) because pandas 3.x requires Python >=3.11.
+    "pandas>=2.3.0,<3.1.0",
 ]
 dev = [
     "pytest",