diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index e99493467..96c980096 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 
 ### Fixed
 
+- Fix NodeJS retrieval when Docker is unavailable ([#1054](https://github.com/alpha-unito/streamflow/pull/1054)
 - Fix bind mount inspection in `SingularityConnector` ([#1058](https://github.com/alpha-unito/streamflow/pull/1058))
 - Fix `--wait` flag in `Helm4Connector` for Cobra parser ([#1050](https://github.com/alpha-unito/streamflow/pull/1050))
 - Fix shell reuse collision across execution locations ([#1045](https://github.com/alpha-unito/streamflow/pull/1045))
diff --git a/streamflow/cwl/utils.py b/streamflow/cwl/utils.py
index 401bf4869..e633f4011 100644
--- a/streamflow/cwl/utils.py
+++ b/streamflow/cwl/utils.py
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
 from collections.abc import MutableMapping, MutableSequence
 from enum import Enum
 from pathlib import PurePath
+from shutil import which
 from types import ModuleType
 from typing import Any, cast
 
@@ -15,6 +16,7 @@
 import cwl_utils.parser
 import cwl_utils.parser.utils
 import cwl_utils.types
+from cachebox import FIFOCache, cached
 from cwl_utils.parser.cwl_v1_2_utils import CONTENT_LIMIT
 from typing_extensions import Self, TypeIs
 
@@ -113,6 +115,14 @@ async def _create_remote_directory(
         )
 
 
+@cached(cache=FIFOCache(1))
+def _get_container_engine() -> str:
+    for engine in ("docker", "singularity", "podman", "udocker"):
+        if which(engine) is not None:
+            return engine
+    return "docker"
+
+
 async def _get_contents(
     path: StreamFlowPath,
     size: int,
@@ -740,6 +750,7 @@ def eval_expression(
             fullJS=full_js,
             strip_whitespace=strip_whitespace,
             timeout=timeout,
+            container_engine=_get_container_engine(),
         )
         if is_expression(expression)
         else expression