Have you ever hired a solutions architect? What are the most important qualities we should look for in candidates?

- Understand the business and being able to connect technology solutions to the business outcome/value.
- Great soft skills, e.g. communication, influencing, prioritization, writing, presentation, etc.
- Always think about options and tradeoffs and be able to explain them to both business and engineering and facilitate informed decision making.
- Exposure to different aspects of technology and software delivery, i.e. having the breadth rather than depth in just a few areas.
- Be able to breakdown work/roadmap in small increment.
- Ones who have learned from past mistakes.

Some of the characteristics I look for
1. Understands the solution domain and the business objectives/needs that would drive the solution choice. 
2. Is exposed to multiple technologies and is not tied to any one. 
3. Shows ability to learn new technologies and apply it
4. Is able to generate multiple options and can choose/recommend options based on the tradeoff between constraints and achieving the goal. 
5. Is able to communicate solution design options to business in a non technical way
6. Is able to model the solution design through formal design modelling techniques so that it can be consumed by technical as well as be maintained as part of a larger system model
7. Is able to model the problem domain well (clearly specify the different aspects of the problem - functional, EA principles, security, performance, maintainability, existing skillset etc)