Methods and apparatus for adaptive power profiling in a baseband processing system. In an exemplary embodiment, an apparatus includes one or more processing engines. Each processing engine performs at least one data processing function. The apparatus also includes an adaptive power profile (APP) and a job manager that receives job requests for data processing. The job manager allocates the data processing associated with the job requests to the processing engines based on the adaptive power profile. The adaptive power profile identifies a first group of the processing engines to perform the data processing associated with the job requests, and identifies remaining processing engines to be set to a low power mode.