diff --git a/awx/main/management/commands/watch_celery.py b/awx/main/management/commands/watch_celery.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..64e03e52aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/awx/main/management/commands/watch_celery.py
@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
+import os
+import signal
+import subprocess
+import sys
+import socket
+import time
+
+from celery import Celery
+from django.core.management.base import BaseCommand
+
+
+class Command(BaseCommand):
+    """Watch local celery workers"""
+    help=("Sends a periodic ping to the local celery process over AMQP to ensure "
+          "it's responsive; this command is only intended to run in an environment "
+          "where celeryd is running")
+
+    #
+    # Just because celery is _running_ doesn't mean it's _working_; it's
+    # imperative that celery workers are _actually_ handling AMQP messages on
+    # their appropriate queues for awx to function.  Unfortunately, we've been
+    # plagued by a variety of bugs in celery that cause it to hang and become
+    # an unresponsive zombie, such as:
+    #
+    # https://github.com/celery/celery/issues/4185
+    # https://github.com/celery/celery/issues/4457
+    #
+    # The goal of this code is periodically send a broadcast AMQP message to
+    # the celery process on the local host via celery.app.control.ping;
+    # If that _fails_, we attempt to determine the pid of the celery process
+    # and send SIGHUP (which tends to resolve these sorts of issues for us).
+    #
+
+    INTERVAL = 60
+
+    def handle(self, **options):
+        app = Celery('awx')
+        app.config_from_object('django.conf:settings')
+        while True:
+            try:
+                pongs = app.control.ping(['celery@{}'.format(socket.gethostname())])
+            except:
+                pongs = []
+            if len(pongs):
+                sys.stderr.write(str(pongs) + '\n')
+            else:
+                sys.stderr.write('celery is not responsive to ping over local AMQP\n')
+                pid = self.getpid()
+                if pid:
+                    sys.stderr.write('sending SIGHUP to {}\n'.format(pid))
+                    os.kill(pid, signal.SIGHUP)
+            time.sleep(self.INTERVAL)
+
+    def getpid(self):
+        cmd = 'supervisorctl pid tower-processes:awx-celeryd'
+        if os.path.exists('/supervisor_task.conf'):
+            cmd = 'supervisorctl -c /supervisor_task.conf pid tower-processes:celery'
+        try:
+            return int(subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell=True))
+        except Exception:
+            sys.stderr.write('could not detect celery pid\n')
diff --git a/installer/roles/image_build/files/supervisor_task.conf b/installer/roles/image_build/files/supervisor_task.conf
index 31f4cbfb1f..c90c6336f0 100644
--- a/installer/roles/image_build/files/supervisor_task.conf
+++ b/installer/roles/image_build/files/supervisor_task.conf
@@ -15,6 +15,18 @@ stdout_logfile_maxbytes=0
 stderr_logfile=/dev/stderr
 stderr_logfile_maxbytes=0
 
+[program:celery-watcher]
+command = /usr/bin/awx-manage celery_watcher
+directory = /var/lib/awx
+environment = LANGUAGE="en_US.UTF-8",LANG="en_US.UTF-8",LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8",LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
+autostart = true
+autorestart = true
+stopwaitsecs = 5
+stdout_logfile=/dev/stdout
+stdout_logfile_maxbytes=0
+stderr_logfile=/dev/stderr
+stderr_logfile_maxbytes=0
+
 [program:callback-receiver]
 command = awx-manage run_callback_receiver
 directory = /var/lib/awx
@@ -38,7 +50,7 @@ stderr_logfile=/dev/stderr
 stderr_logfile_maxbytes=0
 
 [group:tower-processes]
-programs=celery,callback-receiver,channels-worker
+programs=celery,celery-watcher,callback-receiver,channels-worker
 priority=5
 
 # TODO: Exit Handler