diff --git a/r/R/dplyr.R b/r/R/dplyr.R
index 845cb3a1815..c172e9ba065 100644
--- a/r/R/dplyr.R
+++ b/r/R/dplyr.R
@@ -632,7 +632,7 @@ arrow_mask <- function(.data) {
   # Some R functions will still try to evaluate on an Expression
   # and return NA with a warning
   fail <- function(...) stop("Not implemented")
-  for (f in c("mean")) {
+  for (f in c("mean", "sd")) {
     f_env[[f]] <- fail
   }
 
@@ -1006,7 +1006,6 @@ abandon_ship <- function(call, .data, msg = NULL) {
       stop(msg, "\nCall collect() first to pull data into R.", call. = FALSE)
     }
   }
-
   # else, collect and call dplyr method
   if (!is.null(msg)) {
     warning(msg, "; pulling data into R", immediate. = TRUE, call. = FALSE)
diff --git a/r/src/compute.cpp b/r/src/compute.cpp
index 34bc3bea456..c215d661e3a 100644
--- a/r/src/compute.cpp
+++ b/r/src/compute.cpp
@@ -233,6 +233,11 @@ std::shared_ptr<arrow::compute::FunctionOptions> make_compute_options(
                                      max_replacements);
   }
 
+  if (func_name == "variance" || func_name == "stddev") {
+    using Options = arrow::compute::VarianceOptions;
+    return std::make_shared<Options>(cpp11::as_cpp<int64_t>(options["ddof"]));
+  }
+
   return nullptr;
 }
 
diff --git a/r/tests/testthat/test-compute-aggregate.R b/r/tests/testthat/test-compute-aggregate.R
index 0621b7779c7..398b39fb17f 100644
--- a/r/tests/testthat/test-compute-aggregate.R
+++ b/r/tests/testthat/test-compute-aggregate.R
@@ -381,3 +381,21 @@ test_that("all.Array and all.ChunkedArray", {
   expect_vector_equal(all(input, na.rm = TRUE), data_logical)
   
 })
+
+test_that("variance", {
+  data <- c(-37, 267, 88, -120, 9, 101, -65, -23, NA)
+  arr <- Array$create(data)
+  chunked_arr <- ChunkedArray$create(data)
+  
+  expect_equal(call_function("variance", arr, options = list(ddof = 5)), Scalar$create(34596))
+  expect_equal(call_function("variance", chunked_arr, options = list(ddof = 5)), Scalar$create(34596))
+})
+
+test_that("stddev", {
+  data <- c(-37, 267, 88, -120, 9, 101, -65, -23, NA)
+  arr <- Array$create(data)
+  chunked_arr <- ChunkedArray$create(data)
+  
+  expect_equal(call_function("stddev", arr, options = list(ddof = 5)), Scalar$create(186))
+  expect_equal(call_function("stddev", chunked_arr, options = list(ddof = 5)), Scalar$create(186))
+})