Adobe Systems said yesterday that it has promoted Kevin Lynch to chief technology officer.

Lynch will head up the firm's experience design and core technology across a number of business divisions, which includes work on Flash Player, Flex development tools and Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR).

Lynch had previously served as senior veep president and chief software architect, and before that looked after the company's platform biz unit.

He joined California-based Adobe in 2005 following the acquisition of Macromedia, where he had held a number of roles including overseeing the initial development of Dreamweaver.

The promotion underlines Adobe's eagerness to increase its presence in the web apps space where the likes of Google and Microsoft have recently been making plenty of noise.

Adobe president and CEO Shantanu Narayen said: “Kevin’s insights and passion for rich internet applications, and what they signify for the future of software across operating systems and devices, will help enable the next generation of innovation for our customers.”

Here's the Adobe press release. ®