SharePoint development requires administrative network privileges?

My company has a project for which I proposed using SharePoint Enterprise 2010. We are a Microsoft shop, currently using SQL Server 2005 and moving to 2008, but have not used SharePoint previously. A server has been made available for configuring Windows Server 2008 for this proof-of-concept. That server would be my development sandbox for prototyping.

Now our IT admin has come to me and said that in order for me to develop applications for a SharePoint server on our network, I would need to be given administrative access to our network domain, which he says he is not willing to give me. Instead, they proposed a VLAN switching solution, but are having technical difficulties with that.

As a complete novice, I don't know what SharePoint's requirements are, but there are certainly thousands of organizations doing development on that platform. It seems unlikely to me that this would be so if it posed such IT hurdles.

Cany anyone straighten me and my IT guys out about this?

You should be local Admin on the Box and Farm Admin on SharePoint, but you don't need Domain Admin access, no. Your Admin may need to create some service accounts and set up the SQL Server Access for your farm account, but that's it.

user Profile Import and Kerberos Authentication require some extra settings that a Domain Admin needs to do, but that's not a big issue either.

Check out the extensive Deployment documentation: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee518643.aspx

PS: If you have 64-Bit Windows 7, you can run SharePoint 2010 locally: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx