How to manage python sys.path to use pip installed packages before apt

Question

Ubuntu 16.04, Python 2.7, pip 8.1.1 (installed via apt)

I would like to use the intel distribution of numpy (available via pip install intel-numpy), the problem is that the apt package, python-numpy has been automatically installed as a dependency on the system and appears to be priority in the sys.path. I don't think I can use virtual environments for my projects because I am working with ROS and ROS depends heavily on global bash variables including $PYTHONPATH manipulations. So I'm looking for a sensible way to get my python programs to import the pip installed intel-numpy when I run "import numpy as np"?