diff --git a/backend/pom.xml b/backend/pom.xml
index b01f2362..20e34b91 100644
--- a/backend/pom.xml
+++ b/backend/pom.xml
@@ -369,6 +369,12 @@
 				<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
 				<configuration>
 					<forkedProcessTimeoutInSeconds>600</forkedProcessTimeoutInSeconds>
+					<!-- Grace period after the test JVM calls System.exit(0). The 30s default is too
+					     short: the single reused fork closes ~32 cached Spring contexts at shutdown,
+					     each tearing down a Testcontainers Postgres + HikariCP pool, which overruns 30s
+					     and makes Surefire kill the fork (BUILD FAILURE despite 0 test failures). This is
+					     a different knob from forkedProcessTimeoutInSeconds above. See issue #848. -->
+					<forkedProcessExitTimeoutInSeconds>120</forkedProcessExitTimeoutInSeconds>
 					<systemPropertyVariables>
 						<junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.default>90 s</junit.jupiter.execution.timeout.default>
 					</systemPropertyVariables>