A system and method is provided for optimizing an input quantum circuit. An exemplary method includes searching a library of templates to find, by compiling abstract gate operations into a set of hardware-specific operations that manipulate qubit states, a template of quantum circuit gates that performs a predetermined function and that matches a set of quantum circuit gates in the input quantum circuit that performs the predetermined function; and replacing the set of quantum circuit gates in the input quantum circuit with the template of quantum circuit gates when the template of quantum circuit gates has a lower quantum cost than the set of quantum circuit gates based on estimated execution times. Moreover, the method is executed in a pipeline in combination with at least quantum circuit compilation.