The purpose of this paper is to introduce and investigate the notion of derivation for quandle algebras. More precisely, we describe the symmetries on structure constants providing a characterization for a linear map to be a derivation. We obtain a complete characterization of derivations in the case of quandle algebras of emph{dihedral quandles} over fields of characteristic zero, and provide the dimensionality of the Lie algebra of derivations. Many explicit examples and computations are given over both zero and positive characteristic. Furthermore, we investigate inner derivations, in the sense of Schafer for non-associative structures. We obtain necessary conditions for the Lie transformation algebra of quandle algebras of Alexander quandles, with explicit computations in low dimensions.