Salesforce has appointed Miguel Milano to the role of Chief Operating Officer (COO). The promotion, which was announced last week, appears to be another attempt from Salesforce to widen its leadership ranks.
The appointment of the COO – whose role typically involves acting as second-in-command to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – harkens back to the days of Bret Taylor, who served as co-CEO along with Marc Benioff for a year between 2021 and 2022. Robin Washington, who was made chief operating and financial officer last year, will keep her title, even as Milano takes the COO mantle.
Who Is Miguel Milano?
Milano is a former Oracle executive who previously worked for Salesforce in Europe between 2011 and 2020, then worked as Chief Revenue Officer at data processing company Celonis for three years.
As COO, Miguel Milano now leads all of Salesforce’s customer-facing growth engines globally, and is responsible for accelerating customer success.
Milano had worked at Oracle EMEA as part of the executive management team, holding positions between 2004 and 2011 – finishing as Senior VP Oracle Direct and Head of Sales EXA Solutions.
He first joined Salesforce in August 2011, working as President EMEA for nine years.
In April 2020, he became Chief Revenue Officer for Celonis, leading the sales, customer success, and partner organizations.
Milano then returned to Salesforce as President and Chief Revenue Officer in August 2023, working to transform sales and distribution processes in the agentic era.
Miguel has a B.S. and M.S.E. in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, along with an MBA from Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He has also held leadership positions in several other leading global companies, including McKinsey and Telefónica.
Milano made his first appearance on earnings calls for Salesforce last year. He was the fourth highest paid Salesforce executive in the 2026 fiscal year, according to an SEC filing. Marc Benioff, Robin Washington, and Srinivas Tallapragada were the top three.
Other Recent Shakeups
President and chief engineering and customer success officer Srinivas Tallapragada is also leaving the company after 14 years, but will remain special advisor to Benioff for the next year.
Longtime Microsoft executive Rohan Kumar, who started at Salesforce in June, will become Chief Platform and Engineering Officer. Alexa Vignone, who has been Chief Sales Officer since January, will become revenue chief, CNBC reports.
Salesforce recently lost Chief Trust Officer Brad Arkin; the CEO of Tableau, Ryan Aytay; and the EVP and GM of AI, Adam Evans.
Final Thoughts: What This Means for Salesforce
Putting a senior sales and customer-facing executive in the COO role makes sense at this time. Salesforce has been batting narratives of a “SaaSpocalypse” – where AI is supposedly going to make traditional SaaS business models obsolete – for some time now.
In the AI era, Salesforce needs to persuade even its existing customers that Salesforce is the best platform through which they can deploy AI agents. To put it tersely, Salesforce needs to turn Agentforce into a significant revenue stream.
