Shalaka Verma has been named Partner and Executive Director, Data and AI Sales at IBM, marking the beginning of a new chapter in her global technology leadership career.
Announcing her new role, Verma said, “I will be starting a new exciting chapter of my career as Partner and Executive Director, Data and AI Sales at IBM. Rapid innovation in AI has opened up a huge number of possibilities for reimagining and transforming business models. In AI, technology capability at this point remains miles ahead of enterprise deployment, and there is a real opportunity for making significant progress with tech leverage. This also opens up a new threat landscape and new considerations on how we deploy and run mission-critical workloads securely and compliantly that empower and touch so many lives. I am looking forward to being part of this exciting journey and would love to talk to you on what you are doing, and how we can partner.”
Prior to rejoining IBM, Verma served as Head of Customer Engineering at Google, where she led customer-centric cloud engineering initiatives in India, working closely with enterprises to architect scalable, secure, and innovative solutions. Before Google, she spent over five years at Microsoft, holding multiple leadership roles including Senior Director – Cloud Solution Architecture, Azure, Director – Customer Success, BFSI, and Azure Quantum Ambassador.
At Microsoft, she played a pivotal role in ensuring go-live of large-scale Azure workloads, driving cloud adoption, and helping BFSI enterprises accelerate digital transformation across infrastructure, data, AI, security, and application modernization. As Azure Quantum Ambassador, she was instrumental in evangelising quantum computing, building partner ecosystems, supporting academic research, and driving early-stage enterprise adoption.
Verma’s return to IBM is a homecoming of sorts, following a highly successful nine-year tenure where she held senior leadership roles across Asia Pacific. As Director, Technical Sales, IBM Systems – Asia Pacific, she led end-to-end management of technical teams across multiple geographies including ASEAN, Australia & New Zealand, Korea, Singapore, and ISA markets.
During this period, she drove transformation of IBM’s technical sales organisation, repositioning it from a traditional presales function to a business development and sales acceleration engine for next-generation workloads. Her leadership delivered several first-of-its-kind wins across AI platforms, hybrid cloud, open databases, blockchain, high-availability architectures, and disaster recovery solutions.
She also served as IBM Q Ambassador for Quantum Computing, becoming the first ambassador in the ISA region. In this role, she led ecosystem development across corporates, startups, academia, and government bodies, strengthening IBM’s leadership in emerging quantum technologies.
Earlier in her IBM career, as Associate Director – Tech Sales Data Solutions, Asia Pacific, Verma led regional data solutions teams, delivering enterprise-scale transformations in AI, data platforms, open hybrid cloud, and mission-critical infrastructure. Her leadership earned her multiple accolades including 100% Club Winner, Best People Manager, Outstanding Sales Achievement Award, and Putting Client First Award.
Recognised as a passionate global technology sales leader, Verma has consistently delivered high-impact outcomes across cloud, AI, data, and emerging technologies. She has filed three US patents related to blockchain, storage virtualisation, and big data, highlighting her strong R&D orientation. Earlier in her career, she also helped scale startup solutions to enterprise-grade platforms, building advanced performance engineering and architecture practices.
Her portfolio spans banking, telecommunications, media, and public sector, where she has designed and implemented large-scale digital transformation programs across AI infrastructure, data architecture, hybrid cloud, and cybersecurity domains.
In her new role at IBM, Verma will lead Data and AI sales strategy, working closely with enterprises to unlock value through advanced analytics, AI platforms, hybrid cloud, and secure infrastructure. Her appointment comes at a time when organisations across sectors are accelerating AI adoption while balancing governance, security, and compliance imperatives.
