I use a standard user account, one with no administrative privileges, for all my normal work, including software development. I have another account that I use for administrative tasks, like installing software, system configuration, et cetera. I do this for security; for example, if I trigger a drive by attack while browsing the web, the attacking malware--which is running under my standard user account--won't have privileges to do much damage.
However, sometimes it is helpful to be able to sudo a command from that standard user account. I find that it is rarely necessary, but I have found the need on occasion.
What is needed is a way to grant the standard user account privilege to run sudo, but without granting that user account full administrative rights. On OS X, or macOS, the way to do that is with the command sudo visudo. The visudo command lets you edit the so-called "sudoers" file that the system uses to decide who gets to use sudo.
So, login as an administrative user and open a terminal window, or ssh into the system with an administrator account. Then run sudo visdudo. You'll see a section that looks like this:
# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
Add a line after the %admin line and specify your standard user account to look just like the one for root. For example, if my standard user account was joe, then I'd add a line as in this example:
# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
joe ALL=(ALL) ALL
Then save the file (:w ... it's vi/vim).
See this Stack Exchange reply for a bit more detailed instructions.