Build & installation from scratch is far too complex. Relies on fortran libraries of numpy which I can't get built inside my corporate domain
https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues/7517
As @mynegation notes, you can use Anaconda (or virtualenv).
This is the real killer. Any leads on making it less closed?
Also, I'm unfamiliar with how pip works, but you can't even install into your local user profile (i.e. w/o root)?