Techniques for managing the assignment of transcoding tasks to transcoding nodes in a transcoding system are described. In one embodiment, for example, an apparatus may comprise circuitry and a transcoding management module for execution on the circuitry to assign a transcoding task to one of a set of transcoding nodes based on a set of task characteristics of the transcoding task and a set of efficiency values for the set of transcoding nodes, each of the set of efficiency values corresponding to a respective one of the set of transcoding nodes. Other embodiments are described and claimed.