diff --git a/roles/container-engine/containerd/defaults/main.yml b/roles/container-engine/containerd/defaults/main.yml
index 7f76ef33108..0e067b4af04 100644
--- a/roles/container-engine/containerd/defaults/main.yml
+++ b/roles/container-engine/containerd/defaults/main.yml
@@ -126,3 +126,8 @@ containerd_tracing_endpoint: "[::]:4317"
 containerd_tracing_protocol: "grpc"
 containerd_tracing_sampling_ratio: 1.0
 containerd_tracing_service_name: "containerd"
+
+# Determines whether to overwrite an existing containerd config
+# Defaults to true for backwards compatibility, but can be set to false when applications
+# that modify the containerd config are deployed on the cluster, e.g. NVIDIA gpu-operator
+containerd_config_overwrite: true
diff --git a/roles/container-engine/containerd/tasks/main.yml b/roles/container-engine/containerd/tasks/main.yml
index fec1410fc40..44adb020fff 100644
--- a/roles/container-engine/containerd/tasks/main.yml
+++ b/roles/container-engine/containerd/tasks/main.yml
@@ -70,6 +70,7 @@
     dest: "{{ containerd_cfg_dir }}/config.toml"
     owner: "root"
     mode: "0640"
+    force: "{{ containerd_config_overwrite }}"
   notify: Restart containerd
 
 - name: Containerd | Configure containerd registries