Andy Hayes is a Senior Visual Computing Solutions Architect at AWS. With 20 years' experience in Visual Effects and Animation, Andy has led CG divisions and departments and added supervision to film projects, earning both Annie and Visual Effects Society Awards along the way. At AWS, he partners with studios and creative technology companies across the Media & Entertainment industry, spanning VFX and animation to rendering, virtual production, and games, helping them design and scale the cloud infrastructure and workflows behind their content pipelines. Drawing on his production background, Andy bridges the worlds of artists and engineers, guiding customers as they adopt technologies like high-performance rendering, GPU compute, and increasingly AI and machine learning to solve real creative and technical challenges. He remains passionate about the marriage of art and science that leads to the creation of compelling imagery, and about aligning technology to the evolving needs of the industry.