How do you assess your "market value" for a niche role?

In effect, my position developed organically over a few years, and has bits of middle management as well as governance, project management and individual contributor work. I don't think there is even anyone within my organization with a similar role, I have several responsibilities which normally you wouldn't concentrate under one individual if you were designing from the ground up.

This means you cannot be replaced by one person. If your employer had to go out today to the job market there is no one who could fill your shoes, it would probably take 2-3 people to do it. Probably people adjacent to you absorbing some of what you do if they can. And hiring for what cannot be done by those around you. (I would hope your employer has already thought that part through).

I built myself a little fifedom like that at my old job, as long as you are happy where you are ,but it can be hard to move up the ladder when you are doing this.

I left because I was burned out, being pulled in 20 directions, I doubled down on the areas that I wanted to grow, and looked for a roles with those challenges.

I guess one way to figure out your worth would be to ask yourself what would happened if you left tomorrow how would your employer cope. Who could take up your project management role, what do they get paid and how much of their time would be taken up doing it. (Salary/time) Do that for each of your specializations. This might give you a rough estimate of your worth.

In effect, my position developed organically over a few years, and has bits of middle management as well as governance, project management and individual contributor work. I don't think there is even anyone within my organisation with a similar role, I have several responsibilities which normally you wouldn't concentrate under one individual if you were designing from the ground up.

This sounds a lot like my current role. All in all, I'm a software development lead that also wears a few extra hats. I'd suggest finding the best possible fit for your role (probably a middle manager of some sort) and add ~25-40% for the additional responsibilities you've got.

Also, it's almost certain that you won't find the exact same role at another company, so rather than try to tick all the same boxes you have now, you might just shop for the position you'd like to have next in terms of career progression.

That's a sticky one, since it sounds like you've moved into a niche that doesn't exist in other companies.

What I'd recommend is looking at similar positions, and how much of your time could fit within those buckets. If you're 30% this and 40% that and a whole lot of slivers of other positions, just take those cuts of the various positions, average it all out, and then multiply it by 1.5 for making it so they didn't have to get individual specialists for the various roles you fill. It won't be exact, (and you probably couldn't sell anyone on hiring you for an identical position elsewhere), but it'll price your general ballpark.

Do recruiters ever contact you with similar roles, even though it is niche? If so, I would ask for a salary range from everyone who contacts you with a remotely relevant opportunity.

Otherwise, I would recommend figuring out what the closest possible role is that is more common, and assess market value of that role as a benchmark.

I work in a relatively new area of tech/business operations where universally agreed upon titles are actively developing, so for a while I had to do research using a few different roles, basing it more on job descriptions rather than titles. After I talked to enough people and made connections who do similar work as I do, I eventually figured it out.

Honestly, a position like that sounds like one that almost has to be developed organically, as happened to you.

Which, unfortunately, might mean there is no market value for such a position, as a typical company would not hire somebody from outside into such a position.

A best effort might be something like looking at the market rates for the titles of each disparate job function you do and seeing what is highest.

Maybe it's feasible that all your extra knowledge can help you land a role above that (like who is above a project manager and what do they get paid?).

Maybe just go all out and shoot for a director role?

I'm also in Pharma but I'm in finance. So a lot of my skills do transfers over quite well. So you'll need to find where your skills overlap in different areas. There are some roles in Pharma in the finance area that are only in Pharma such as chargebacks and the rebate/fee area. But the skill sets are what transfer over. Analytics, project management, customer service/customer interfacing. You'll have to look at those then look at LinkedIn and find jobs that use those skill sets. Then use glass door or salary.com to get an idea. A lot of jobs now require depending on the state to post the salary range. If you're able to give a little more info others may be able to help.