The term "imagineer" covers a wide group of people, from sketch artists to structural engineers... thus giving birth to the term "imagineer" to begin with. There are very few imagineers left because Disney has been letting them go left and right (and many went to go work for Universal Studios in building the "Islands of Adventure" park). There are so few left, and they're all so scared of being fired, that any project that does come along has an extremely competitive gallery of folks trying to get in on the deal. Thus the "model of Disneyland when it first opened in 1955" exhibit that is on display inside the "Disneyland... The First 50 Magical Years" building became a multi-million dollar boondoggle because practically every imagineer with nothing to do jumped into the project in an effort to keep from being laid off.
Most of the actual work on rides are being done by outside contractors now. Like any large project, there's going to be a 'project manager' that rides herd over the whole, um, project. There will be several imagineers under that project manager, and then it branches off from there.
Who knows how much someone like Tony Baxter makes? I can't tell you how much other imagineers make, even though I have done financial work for them, because I'd be coming close to breaking federal privacy laws and while I don't LOVE my job, I'd like to keep it.
DO a search on the 'net of how much a structural engineer makes, or an industrial artist makes in the Southern California marketplace (burbank area) and my personal bet would be that Disney would pay towards the top of whatever scale you find.
Disney hires only the best (thus the higher pay scale) and hires only those with a LOT (20 years) of experience, so you've got a while to "make it" to that level. Hopefully Disney will have seen the short sighted error of there ways and have a full contingent of imagineers by then.
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