Security Manager, Intellectual Property Protection

Funko Overview

Welcome to the Funko-verse, a world built on pure imagination, a land governed by the philosophy that stories matter, a universe comprised of characters from countless fandoms, a galaxy of once upon a times and happily ever afters.

But what does Funko do?

Funko is a purveyor of pop culture and a licensed-focused collectibles company. Funko currently holds thousands of licenses and the rights to create tens of thousands of characters – one of the largest portfolios in the pop culture and collectibles industry. Funko’s Pop! Vinyl is the number one stylized vinyl collectible on the market, selling millions of figures to fans around the world.

About the Role

The Security Manager, Intellectual Property Protection is a leadership role within Funko's Information Security team, reporting directly to the Sr. Manager, Information Security. This manager owns the strategy and execution of protecting Funko's most sensitive intellectual property: pre-release product designs, digital assets, and confidential materials entrusted to Funko by third-party licensors.
Funko’s business depends on the trust of major entertainment licensors. Product designs are frequently created under embargo where any leak of imagery, names, or product details before the licensor’s public announcement can damage the licensor’s launch, breach contractual confidentiality obligations, and put the licensing relationship itself at risk. This role is accountable for ensuring that never happens. Its first priority is engineering, enforcing, and continuously verifying the embargo controls that protect unannounced licensed products across the entire lifecycle from concept art and licensor approvals through manufacturing, marketing, and retail launch. Its second priority is building and operating the data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities that back those controls. The role also contributes to security policy where it touches licensed IP, and as a member of the Information Security team, supports broader security operations and projects.

The role partners closely with Legal, Licensing, Product Development, Marketing, Sales, Sourcing, and IT, as well as with licensor security teams and external manufacturing and logistics partners. The ideal candidate is an experienced security professional with hands-on data protection and DLP skills, ideally with experience protecting embargoed or pre-release content in an entertainment, licensing, or consumer products environment.

Although this role sits within IT/Information Security, the role will coordinate closely with Legal and Licensing on IP risk, licensor obligations, confidentiality strategy, and enforcement-sensitive decisions.

What You’ll Do

1. Embargoed & Pre-Release Product Protection (Primary Focus)

• Own end-to-end technical protection of unannounced licensed products — e.g., figures developed for a licensor’s unannounced film, series, or game — ensuring designs, renders, packaging, names, and launch timing do not leak prior to the licensor’s public announcement.
• Engineer and enforce the embargo control framework for confidential projects: project code names, need-to-know access, segregated digital workspaces, restricted distribution lists, and recurring access reviews across product development, marketing, and sales systems.
• Maintain an inventory of active embargoed projects and their licensor-mandated reveal dates, and verify that controls are in place and operating for each project from kickoff through public announcement.
• Deploy and manage technical protections for digital design assets, including visible and forensic watermarking, digital rights management, secure digital asset management platforms, and controlled review/approval workflows with licensors.
• Establish secure handling requirements for physical pre-production items (sculpts, prototypes, paint masters, packaging samples) across offices, photo studios, trade shows, and in transit.
• Extend embargo and confidentiality controls to third parties — manufacturers, agencies, photographers, logistics providers, and retail customers — through contractual security requirements, onboarding assessments, and ongoing verification.
• Review and document systems and workflows that reveal Funko confidential information to third parties, including digital asset management platforms, collaboration tools, vendor/customer portals, licensor approval workflows, APIs, integrations, shared drives, and file-transfer tools.
• Support Legal and Licensing in managing licensor, customer, vendor, supplier, manufacturer, agency, and other external stakeholder security expectations tied to confidential assets.
• Proactively monitor high-risk leak channels, including factory floor photography, early retail listings and sell-sheets, marketplace sales of pre-release