Rather than editing PDFs directly, might it be possible to use LibreOffice (LO) Writer? Write, with all the features/facilities of a document editor that will likely meet all your needs. When the document is complete, export as PDF and e-sign the PDF with LO as well…

LibreOffice is community driven and developed software project, not the product of an American company.

‘Bates’ numbering: LO Writer supports creating custom page numbering formats/styles.

e-sign: e-sign the PDF with LO as well, reference links below

Workflow

an example workflow might be:

• Create document templates, save read-only in network accesible location; only the template maintainer can edit/save the templates; law firm logo, letter head, watermarks, Bates numbering, etc.,
• Author copies desired templlate to author’s system; makes the copy writable,
• Edits/saves drafts locally on author’s system, or in a central, network accessible repository… backups, team access, preliminary/formal reviews, etc.
• When final version is complete, export as PDF, and of course, save it as well
• esign PDF using LO

References

https://knowledge.digicert.com/tutorials/sign-openoffice-libreoffice-documents https://duckduckgo.com/?q=libreoffice+pdf+esign&t=vivaldim&ia=web

Once I needed to edit text under pdf and onlyoffice worked for me and okular can handle all of those

Editor, guys. They want a pdf editor.

That said, editing pdf is kinda a broken concept. Pdf is made to represent, not to edit. Better edit the source that created the pdf.
But if you have to, look for a vector editor, like Inkscape. To save again as pdf, use export.

I don’t know every detail of your use cases, but my offline go to is xournal++ (xournalpp).

I use it for many of those actions. We moved to Germany and having a GUI pdf editor for signing, highlighting, redacting, pulling pages, etc has been invaluable.

My wife also uses it for her class lectures. She does math, so she uses a tablet to write on her slides (pdfs) live in class to talk through the material. Then, she saves the lecture PDF to give to students with the notes.

Stirling pdf

The law firm that I work for is has finally decided that we should embrace Linux.

Never thought I’d read this sentence. I don’t have any recommendations, just wanted to say congrats on achieving the unthinkable!

OnlyOffice

I remember Okular having a decent set of features. It might be worth checking out. The webpage says it supports digital signing, which is a suprise to me because that’s always been a hassle on linux for me. https://okular.kde.org/

Bonus points: It’s a non-American company

As an American, keep doing this. Make it fucking hurt them. A lot.

If you’d be fine with having a docker container running, have a look at Signature PDF.

I’ve been using it to manipulate pdfs in similar ways you described and put it on a pi in my homenetwork (autostarting docker would also work).

They have a tester here.

(Also: french open source project)

BentoPDF - bentopdf.com. It can handle anything you might need to do with a PDF. It requires docker, but thats easy enough to do on an individual machine. Your corporate setting adds some complications no doubt, and they may be looking for an actual company-backed app. I’m not very familiar with the commercial PDF editor market.

Libreoffice suite allows you to export any document in pdf. Libreoffice Draw I use to edit pdf content. PdfArranger is a very nice tool to change the structure of a pdf (like adding a pdf file to an existing pdf, or deleting pages, you see all the pages at once on the screen and can see the content when you zoom, very intuitive). When I need to add signatures or raster pictures with transparency, I open the required page on Gimp and “File->Open as layer” the picture. Usually it works with Draw directly.

I have been working several years like this and it is pretty much a no-brainer now.

in this decade my worst Linux experience has been attempting to digitally sign a document what a wasteland of decrepit and poorly documented tools