In the design of a charged particle optical system, many geometrical and electric parameters have to be optimized to improve the performance characteristics. In every optimization cycle, the electromagnetic field and particle trajectories have to be calculated. Therefore, the optimization of a charged particle optical system is limited by the computer resources seriously. Apart from this, numerical errors of calculation may also influence the convergence of merit function. This article studies how to improve the optimization of charged particle optical systems. A new method is used to determine the gradient matrix. With this method, the accuracy of the Jacobian matrix can be improved. In this paper, the charged particle optical system is optimized with a Message Passing Interface (MPI). The electromagnetic field, particle trajectories and gradients of optimization variables are calculated on networks of workstations. Therefore, the speed of optimization has been increased largely. It is possible to design a complicated charged particle optical system with optimum quality on a MPI environment. Finally, an electron gun for a cathode ray tube has been optimized on a MPI environment to verify the method proposed in this paper.