It's a bit annoying, but you can install conda without admin privileges and apptainer was installed for compliance with some EuroHPC project and luckily made accessible to all users. The container allows me to have an environment where I have "root" access and can install software.

The most annoying thing is not the lack of privileges, but that the compute nodes do not have internet access (because "security") beside connecting to the headnode, so there is the whole song and dance of running the container (or installing conda packages) on the headnode so I can download everything I need, then saving the state and running them on the compute node.