Variable high energy gamma-ray emission reveals violent phenomena of cosmic accelerators, such as supermassive black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and probably gravitational wave bursts. The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is China's first space science mission, dedicating to measuring high energy cosmic rays, electrons, and photons with high energy resolution. We report a search for variable gamma-ray emission with nearly 1.5 year DAMPE data. Two candidate variable sources, associated with active galactic nuclei CTA 102 and 3C 454.3, are found. We also search for potential short-term clusterings of arrival time of photons, and find dozens of photon pairs, one photon triple and one quadruple.