Make riding understandable.
Break skills into clear steps, teach with patience and energy, and create lessons that are safe, productive, and enjoyable.
Equestrian Programs · Year-Round
Horseback Riding Instructor
Lessons & Rider Development
Teach safe, effective riding while building long-term relationships with riders and families. Help each rider understand where they are, where they are going, and what comes next.
Hours15-35 / week
TypeNon-Seasonal
ScheduleFixed-Variable Weekly
CompensationNegotiable by Skill Level
LocationRansomville, NY
Teach the lesson. Develop the rider. Build the relationship.
A riding lesson is part of a much longer journey.
Autumn's Gate instructors do more than teach what happens in the arena that day. They help riders build confidence, skill, responsibility, and a genuine relationship with horses over time.
That means knowing your riders, understanding their goals, tracking their progress, adapting instruction when they need something different, and communicating clearly with parents or adult riders about what is improving and what comes next.
We want instructors who care about the quality of the lesson, the welfare of the horse, and the long-term experience of the family. The strongest instructors create riders who feel challenged, supported, safe, and excited to keep growing.
Your mission
Create riders who know they are progressing.
Build an individual path.
Track skills, goals, confidence, milestones, and challenges so each rider's curriculum can evolve with their actual progress.
Keep families in the journey.
Maintain long-term relationships, communicate progress and next steps, and help riders and parents understand the value of the work they are doing.
What you'll own
Your responsibilities may include:
- Conducting private, semi-private, and group horseback riding lessons for children, teens, and adults.
- Teaching foundational through developing western riding skills in a safe, energetic, and encouraging way.
- Building individualized rider-development plans based on age, ability, confidence, goals, learning style, and progress.
- Tracking rider skills, milestones, challenges, goals, attendance, and next steps in student records.
- Adjusting lesson plans and curriculum when a rider needs a different pace, explanation, exercise, horse, or approach.
- Maintaining ongoing relationships with riders and families and communicating regularly about progress, concerns, goals, and recommendations.
- Helping riders understand what they have accomplished and what they are working toward next.
- Ensuring riders, visitors, and team members follow Barn Rules and safe horse-handling practices.
- Matching riders with appropriate lesson horses based on size, ability, temperament, confidence, and instructional goals.
- Observing lesson horses for changes in health, soundness, behavior, stress, or suitability and reporting concerns promptly.
- Helping prepare lesson horses through grooming, tacking, groundwork, lunging, or other approved preparation when needed.
- Assisting with the training and development of lesson horses so they remain safe, useful, and appropriate for the program.
- Contributing to the ongoing development and improvement of lesson curriculum, rider milestones, clinics, events, and other equestrian programming.
- Coordinating with associate instructors, farm staff, customer experience, and program leadership so lessons run smoothly.
- Using technology to manage attendance, forms, records, notes, scheduling, and rider-development information.
- Creating an environment where riders have fun while still learning responsibility, confidence, and good horsemanship.
Experience & professional readiness
Horse experience matters. So does how you use it.
This is one of the roles where real equestrian experience is important. We still hire for the whole person, but instructors need enough horse knowledge, judgment, and riding ability to safely lead other riders.
Strong background indicators
- 5+ years riding and working with horses, or approximately 2+ years of horseback riding instruction.
- Western riding and horsemanship experience.
- Experience teaching children and families is a significant advantage.
- Experience teaching private, semi-private, or group lessons.
- Comfort with horse care, groundwork, tack, lesson preparation, and behavior observation.
What matters just as much
- A fun, energetic, customer-service-focused attitude.
- Patience and the ability to explain the same concept in more than one way.
- Strong judgment around rider safety and horse welfare.
- The ability to work as part of a team and create camaraderie.
- Basic technology comfort for records, attendance, forms, notes, and scheduling.
- Reliable transportation and strong time management.
Before you apply
We're hiring the person, not just the résumé.
Life is pretty awesome.
We want technically capable horse people, but we also want instructors who are positive, coachable, responsible, thoughtful, and genuinely enjoy helping people grow.
Skills can be taught. Experience can be built. The right person can grow with us.
- You care about the rider as a person, not just whether they completed the exercise.
- You care about the horse as a partner, not just a tool used to deliver a lesson.
- You communicate clearly and professionally with parents, adult riders, and teammates.
- You are willing to document progress and follow through on long-term rider goals.
- You can accept feedback and continue improving your own instruction.
- You bring energy without becoming careless or sacrificing safety.
- You understand that retention comes from trust, progress, and a great relationship, not pressure.
- You want to contribute to a team that values confidence, empowerment, responsibility, growth, and fun.
Is this you?
The work should feel right on both sides.
You may love this role if...
- You love teaching as much as you love riding.
- You enjoy helping a nervous or frustrated rider finally understand something.
- You naturally notice small improvements and want to help riders build on them.
- You like getting to know families and maintaining long-term relationships.
- You care about horse welfare and want good horsemanship built into the lesson program.
- You enjoy improving curriculum, systems, lesson structure, and rider-development tools.
This may not be the role for you if...
- You mainly want paid saddle time and are less interested in teaching people.
- You do not enjoy communicating with parents or adult riders.
- You dislike recordkeeping, progress notes, planning, or curriculum structure.
- You prefer teaching every rider exactly the same way regardless of individual needs.
- You are uncomfortable receiving coaching or working within program standards.
- You see horse welfare, lesson safety, or barn procedures as secondary to finishing the lesson.
Where this can lead
Build a professional equestrian career with us.
Strong instructors can grow beyond their weekly lesson book as they demonstrate teaching quality, rider retention, horse judgment, curriculum capability, and leadership.
Advanced Instruction
Develop stronger private, group, specialty, clinic, and rider-development capabilities.
Curriculum Development
Help shape lesson progressions, milestones, assessments, clinics, events, and instructional systems.
Horse & Program Development
Take greater responsibility for lesson-horse suitability, training support, rider matching, and program quality.
Equestrian Leadership
Grow into mentoring instructors, program coordination, team leadership, scheduling, and broader equestrian-management responsibility.
The application process
Simple, conversational, and human.
Review the role
Make sure the teaching, rider-development, family communication, horse-care, and schedule expectations sound right for you.
Submit the application
Tell us about your horse background, instructional experience, availability, education, and why you want to teach.
Interview with Bit
Bit reviews your submitted application and conducts a tailored initial interview based on your experience and answers.
Human review
Qualified applications and Bit's interview summary move to the appropriate Autumn's Gate team leader.
Apply for the position
Ready to help riders grow?
Complete the Horseback Riding Instructor application here. Once it is submitted successfully, you will continue to the Bit interview page. Bit will use what you shared in the application to personalize the initial interview, so you should not need to repeat information unnecessarily.
Bit helps organize and evaluate the initial conversation. Qualified applicants are then sent to the appropriate Autumn's Gate team leader for human review. Bit does not make the final hiring decision.