Leadership & Governance

Robert Groat is the EVP of Technology and Strategy for SMX, bringing to his position more than 30 years of experience and strategy consulting skills in designing, developing, and delivering market-leading products and services, especially in financial services, healthcare, federal, and Department of Defense sectors. 

He helps formulate SMX’s strategy and vision and ensures the company’s technology innovations are optimized to support the strategy and aligned with current and future client needs. He and his team identify innovative technologies that can help clients accelerate mission success and help SMX operate more efficiently and cost-effectively and determine whether to build or acquire the technology. Rob is also responsible for building strategic partnerships, evaluating potential acquisitions, and leveraging them to achieve synergy and value for clients and SMX.

Under Rob’s technology leadership, the company has developed large-scale cloud solutions for Treasury, Department of Justice, Department of Interior, United States Navy, Fannie Mae, Federal Reserve, Toyota, Dole Food, NFL Mobile, Allergan, Siemens, and Medtronic.  The first use of virtualization technologies in theater (for the forward-deployed Marine Expeditionary Forces) took place under his leadership, as did the first government-wide solution hosted in the Amazon AWS cloud. 

Before joining SMX, Rob was Chief Technology and Products Officer at netDecide Inc., where he led the creation of award-winning enterprise wealth management platforms for several large commercial enterprises. He began his career in software architecture with Booz Allen Hamilton.

He is a frequent lecturer at cloud and technology conferences including XML One, Amazon Web Services (AWS) RE:Invent and public sector conferences, DGI’s cloud summits, and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association Service-Oriented Architecture conference. He has co-published numerous papers on advanced optimization mathematics, holds a patent in numerical analyses methods, and was the winner of the Northern Virginia Technology Council CTO Innovator of the Year award for his pioneering work in deploying cloud solutions for the federal government.

Rob holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, and several professional certifications across AWS, Google, and Microsoft Azure. He and his wife of 15 years and their two children enjoy sailing and fishing the waters around Solomons, MD.