This chapter proposes the use of modern first-order large-scale optimization techniques to manage a cloud-based densely deployed next-generation wireless network. In the first part of the chapter we survey a few popular first-order methods for large-scale optimization, including the block coordinate descent (BCD) method, the block successive upper-bound minimization (BSUM) method and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). In the second part of the chapter, we show that many difficult problems in managing large wireless networks can be solved efficiently and in a parallel manner, by modern first-order optimization methods. Extensive numerical results are provided to demonstrate the benefit of the proposed approach.