This paper presents a description of par2Dhp—a 2D, parallel fully automatic hp-adaptive finite element code. The parallel implementation is an extension of the sequential code 2Dhp90, which generates fully automatic hp-approximations for solutions of various boundary value problems. The presented work addresses parallelization of each stage of the automatic hp-adaptive algorithm, including decomposition of the computational domain, load balancing and data re-distribution, a parallel frontal solver, and algorithms for parallel mesh refinement and mesh reconciliation. The application was written in Fortran 90 and MPI, and the load balancing is done through an interface with the Zoltan library. Numerical results are presented for the model L-shape domain problem, and a highly anisotropic heat conduction (battery) problem from Sandia National Laboratories.