Techniques to manage dwell times for pilot rotation are described. An apparatus may comprise a memory configured to store a data structure with a set of modulation and coding schemes (MCS) available to an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, each MCS having an associated pilot dwell time. The apparatus may further comprise a processor circuit coupled to the memory, the processor circuit configured to identify a MCS to communicate a packet using multiple subcarriers of the OFDM system, and retrieve a pilot dwell time associated with the MCS from the memory, the pilot dwell time to indicate when to shift a pilot tone between subcarriers of the multiple subcarriers during communication of the packet. Other embodiments are described and claimed.