diff --git a/scripts/k8s_ws_runtime_smoke_check.sh b/scripts/k8s_ws_runtime_smoke_check.sh
index 4a6a3b1..b555a60 100755
--- a/scripts/k8s_ws_runtime_smoke_check.sh
+++ b/scripts/k8s_ws_runtime_smoke_check.sh
@@ -84,7 +84,8 @@ PY_BLOCKED
 pod_for_deployment() {
   local deployment="$1"
   local selector
-  selector="$(kubectl -n "$NAMESPACE" get deployment "$deployment" -o jsonpath='{range $k,$v:=.spec.selector.matchLabels}{$k}{"="}{$v}{","}{end}' | sed 's/,$//')"
+  selector="$(kubectl -n "$NAMESPACE" get deployment "$deployment" -o json | python3 -c 'import json, sys; labels=json.load(sys.stdin)["spec"]["selector"]["matchLabels"]; print(",".join(f"{k}={v}" for k,v in sorted(labels.items())))')"
+  [[ -n "$selector" ]] || return 1
   kubectl -n "$NAMESPACE" get pod -l "$selector" -o jsonpath='{.items[?(@.status.phase=="Running")].metadata.name}' | awk '{print $1}'
 }