Verint names Abhi Sharma as chief product & tech chief

Verint has appointed Abhi Sharma as Chief Product and Technology Officer, a new role that combines the company's product and technology functions under one executive.

Sharma joins as Verint reshapes its leadership structure around artificial intelligence and customer experience software. He will oversee both teams as a single organisation.

The appointment gives Sharma responsibility for product strategy and technology development at a group that sells automation tools for customer service operations. Verint says its customer base includes more than 80 Fortune 100 companies, with users across contact centres, back offices and digital channels.

He brings senior experience from several large software and technology groups, including Weave, Twilio, Salesforce, Oracle, Amazon and Microsoft. His background includes work on AI-based personalisation, automation systems and customer communications infrastructure.

At Twilio, Sharma worked on AI-driven omnichannel services and infrastructure that supported hundreds of billions of messages each year. Most recently, he served as Chief Technology Officer at Weave, where he led research and development on autonomous AI agents, as well as security, compliance, integrations and scalability.

The hire comes as software groups continue to reorganise leadership teams around AI products and the commercial use of automation tools. Bringing product and engineering under one executive is a common structure for companies seeking closer links between development priorities and customer demand.

Dave Rhodes, Chief Executive Officer at Verint, said the move reflected customer demand for practical AI results.

"Our customers are getting real business outcomes now from AI in CX, and we're building on that from a position of strength," Rhodes said.

He said Sharma would lead a combined organisation spanning product and technology.

"Abhi will lead product and technology as one organisation, increasing our pace of innovation and keeping what we build closely tied to what customers need," Rhodes said.

AI focus

Verint has made AI in customer experience a central part of its business, with software designed to automate interactions and workflows across service operations. Its platform is used by large brands seeking to manage customer engagement more efficiently through digital and contact centre systems.

Sharma's appointment indicates Verint wants tighter oversight of how those AI products are developed and brought to market. The role brings technical execution and product direction under one leader.

That approach reflects a wider trend across enterprise software, where companies are under pressure to show that AI spending can produce measurable returns for customers. In customer service technology, that often means proving improvements in workflow, service quality or operating costs rather than simply adding new tools.

Sharma pointed to those expectations in his first remarks after the appointment.

"The iconic brands we serve expect breakthrough AI capabilities that also meet enterprise standards for scale, stability and security," Sharma said.

He added: "We're set up to deliver these and continue driving tangible, measurable AI outcomes."

Career path

Before joining Verint, Sharma built his career across cloud, communications and enterprise software businesses. His previous employers include some of the industry's biggest names, giving him experience in both large-scale platforms and specialist software operations.

That mix may be relevant for Verint as it competes in a crowded market for customer experience technology, where vendors are racing to add AI features while also meeting customer requirements on reliability, security and integration with existing systems.

For Verint, the leadership change also signals a more centralised model for technology decisions. By creating a combined product and technology office, the company is concentrating responsibility for what it builds and how it builds it in a single executive role.

Verint says Sharma brings decades of experience leading and scaling global technology organisations.