@dragos: I run into the same problem at work too, and I can say it's safe to do so 
If admin still doesn't budge, then have them to at least install devtoolset, and add this line in .bashrc profile for you/shiny/rstudio-connect (or whatever username that will be running your deployment):
# using devtoolset-7 in my case
source scl_source enable devtoolset-7